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Artificial intelligence and covid-19: Can the machines save us?

Genetic testing. Interventions attempted. Outcomes. Now, nearly 10 months into the outbreak, scientists are starting to make connections in this jumble of letters and numbers with the help of artificial intelligence, leading to new theories about the virus and how to stop it. While the human brain can process only so much information at a time, machines are whizzes at finding subtle patterns in huge amounts of data, and they are being deployed against covid-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — in ways only imagined in the past. Data scientists are aiming AI at some of the coronavirus’s biggest mysteries — why the disease looks so different in children vs. adults, what makes some people “superspreaders” while others don’t transmit the virus at all — and other, lesser questions we have made little headway in understanding. At Northwestern University, a modeling lab is running large-scale simulations on the effects of travel restrictions and social distancing on infection rates. The U.S. Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory is using AI to home in on the most promising molecules to test in the lab as possible treatments. In Egypt, AI is helping counter coronavirus misinformation in Arabic. Jason Moore, director of the Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania, who is helping put together an international covid-19 data consortium, said that if the virus had hit 20 years ago, the world might have been doomed. “But I think we have a fighting chance today because of AI and machine learning,” he said. In April, a computer sorting through medical records confirmed that a lack of smell and taste, which had been reported mostly anecdotally, was one of the earliest symptoms of infection — a discovery that influenced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add anosmia to its list of symptoms. In June, a deep dive into the records of nearly 8,000 patients found that while only a small fraction had obvious and catastrophic blood clots, nearly all had worrisome changes in their blood coagulation. Other researchers piggybacked on Venkatakrishnan’s finding of the aberrant genetic sequence to understand how the virus binds to cells, and to use that knowledge to develop drugs that aim to reduce transmission. In a follow-up paper published in September, Venkatakrishnan and his colleagues reported that a computer analysis showed this “evolutionary tinkering” by coronavirus, which appears to have made it appear like

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Artificial intelligence and covid-19: Can the machines save us?

live.” Celi said that an AI analysis of covid-19 mortality data, under review at a journal, shows that ventilator and bed allocation plans in many states do not accurately predict who might benefit most from treatment. He is urging states and hospitals to rework those plans for a second wave of the pandemic, with an eye toward minimizing biases. Moore, the Penn bioinformatics expert, has similar concerns about analyses on the efficacy of therapies. “If you’re only studying primarily Caucasian populations and want to apply that nationally, that may not work as well on a more diverse population,” he said. “AI algorithms themselves can be biased, and can pick and inflate biases in the data. Those are the things I worry about.” Cambridge, Mass.-based Nference is made up of 250 computer programmers, PhDs in medical or biological sciences, and other specialists. Before the pandemic, the company, which raised nearly $145 million from venture capital funds and other investors, had secured partnerships with several prestigious institutions — most prominently the Mayo Clinic and Janssen Pharmaceuticals — to help them manage and analyze their medical data. The company’s previous focus was cancer. But since April, it has made headlines for its work on covid-19. In peer-reviewed publications, the team has confirmed reports out of Britain that steroid use could be effective in treating severely impacted covid-19 patients experiencing respiratory distress. It found that a small percentage of people might be long-term “shedders” of the virus — for up to 22 days. And it identified existing childhood vaccines that may provide some protection against covid-19 infection. It has also partnered with Minnesota state to develop a way to predict covid-19 hot spots so that public health resources such as test sites could be better deployed. In addition to clinical data, the company is analyzing 50,000 public documents from academic journals, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other public sources of data on covid-19 — many multiples of what the average researcher can follow and digest. Venky Soundararajan, co-founder of Nference and a biological engineer, said that seeing the scope of the information gathered on covid-19 makes him hopeful and appreciative that so many minds around the world — both human and artificial — are working on the problem. “It makes you very humble very quickly,” he said. “What you know is only an atom in the universe of what’s out there.”

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So, while we’re waiting . . . will Mike Pence ever be president?

Olivia Troye remembers a time when she wished Mike Pence were president. Troye, a Department of Homeland Security official, had been working with the vice president on the coronavirus task force. He had impressed her: working hard, staying late, speaking to Democratic governors about the need to keep politics out of the government’s response to the deadly pandemic. “Once I said to him, ‘I wish it was you in the Oval Office. It would be a lot different,’ ” she says. It was more a commentary on President Trump’s poor leadership than an endorsement of Pence, but still — “It was pretty blunt,” she says. “He stayed quiet and did the Mike Pence smile, a smile he has when he is just genuinely being himself.” Pence’s ability to just be himself, however, has been greatly hampered by being Trump’s wingman. The president has undermined his government’s public-health message by contradicting its scientists, sowing doubt about mask-wearing and social distancing and claiming that the virus was mostly harmless and forever on the brink of disappearing. For his part, Pence wrote an infamous newspaper op-ed declaring there would be “no second wave” of the novel coronavirus. That was four months and 100,000 deaths ago. Cases were spiking at that time and now are spiking again. The White House has been the site of several outbreaks — including, most recently, a rash of infections among Pence’s own staff. “I watched him try to do the right thing,” says Troye. “But also constantly have to pivot to stay in the good graces of the president. He was still trying to remain on the ticket, that’s reality.” Troye left in August and has since become a vocal critic of the administration; Pence has responded by dismissing her a “disgruntled” former employee. “I wouldn’t trust anything Olivia Troye tells you,” said Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller. Watching the 2020 campaign from afar, Troye sees a different kind of smile on Pence’s face. He flashed that smile recently during a standoff with Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes”; the vice president, in an act of hostile politesse, refused to answer her questions and instead issued a weak but unrelenting stream of campaign-trail pablum in the manner of a garden hose attached to a tap someone left open by accident. He has worn the smile on rally stages across the country when he “brings greetings” from the president. That he’s

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From Prince George’s County to a Nobel Peace Prize

calls an “office in a box," perished in March 2019 in the Boeing 737 crash in Ethiopia that killed more than 20 people affiliated with the United Nations, including seven from WFP. Colin tells me that in addition to the exhilaration that he and his colleagues feel at having won this prestigious award, there is also a sense of disbelief and unworthiness. There are so many people working so hard around the world to help vulnerable people. Why choose the WFP? Perhaps because, as the Nobel Committee noted in making the award, it does the challenging work of trying to end the use of “hunger as a weapon of war.” So many ordinary things are weaponized that those of us who live securely do not know or see what others around the world endure — or die trying to endure. And so in winning the Nobel, WFP has a chance to educate, inspire and, yes, humble us. I certainly feel humbled knowing that the little boy I so adored has become a man I can only try to emulate. In 2019, WFP provided food assistance to nearly 100 million people in the more than 80 countries where it works. Eighty percent of WFP resources were focused on people living in conflict environments. By 2030, it is estimated that nearly half of the global poor will be living in fragile and conflict-affected situations. Prince George’s County, where I grew up, has produced its share of basketball phenoms and politicians and geniuses (witness the founders of Google, one of whom went to Roosevelt, too). But peacemakers? We surely can count many of those in the ranks of former and current Peace Corps workers and other humanitarians. And a Nobel Peace Prize winner? I will have to do some research on that. Lesson learned: When I feel overwhelmed reading about the day’s news, I remember that millions of people around the world have no say in living through it. Watch Opinions videos: Read more: José Andrés: Our people are hungry. We need a leader who will feed them. David M. Beasley: Covid-19 could detonate a ‘hunger pandemic.’ With millions at risk, the world must act. Mark Leon Goldberg: Why the WHO deserves the Nobel Peace Prize José Andrés: How we’ve served 1 million meals to Hurricane Dorian survivors in the Bahamas Christine Emba: Foreign aid as a cash-only transaction? It’s worth a try.

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Saudi crown prince girds for legal battle in a changing Washington over human rights allegations

litigants and lawyers have to address egregious conduct by authoritarian regimes.” The firm’s new human rights practice will assist corporations with independent investigations, crisis response, international negotiations and global business reviews, as well as litigate for individuals. Earlier this year, the firm also added another former U.S. diplomat, Lee S. Wolosky, and attorney Douglass Mitchell, who together previously succeeded in freezing more than $2 billion in Iranian assets to enforce court judgments for the benefit of terrorism victims. “Doug is the nation’s foremost lawyer in enforcing U.S. terrorism judgments abroad and is experienced litigating cases against banks under the Anti-Terrorism Act,” Wolosky said. “More generally, he is an exceedingly experienced and talented trial lawyer.” “You have to be willing to treat gross human rights abuses with the attention they deserve and use instruments in this country that have been established to protect our rights and our democracy and defend our values,” Pressman said. “That’s not only a responsibility of human rights activists, but also of companies doing business in the world, where they have exposures to abuses.” Aljabri asserted in a complaint filed Aug. 6 that the Saudi leader orchestrated a conspiracy to kill him in Canada that parallels one that resulted in the death of Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi columnist and Washington Post contributor. The CIA has assessed that Mohammed probably ordered Khashoggi’s killing himself, The Post previously reported. Since March, Saudi authorities have arrested and held one of Aljabri’s sons, Omar, 22, and a daughter, Sarah, 20, the lawsuit alleges. Aljabri’s brother has also been arrested, and other relatives detained and tortured in and out of Saudi Arabia, the lawsuit asserts, “all in an effort to bait [Aljabri] back to Saudi Arabia to be killed.” Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World Now claimed in their lawsuit that Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Turkey to obtain documents that would allow him to marry pursuant to a directive by Mohammed to “permanently silence” his advocacy for democratic reform in the Arab world. Saudi officials have asserted that Khashoggi’s death was a tragic accident, carried out by rogue agents who disobeyed orders to persuade Khashoggi to return to the kingdom. The kingdom prosecuted people it said were Khashoggi’s killers in a trial broadly criticized by human rights groups, which noted that court sessions were closed to the public and that no senior officials were held to account.

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Saved by the whale: Runaway train caught by fateful sculpture

A fatefully placed whale sculpture in the Netherlands saved a careening train from certain devastation Monday, catching the lead runaway metro carriage on the graceful arc of its mammoth tail. The improbable incident unfolded at the De Akkers metro station in Spijkenisse just after midnight. Photos from the scene suggest that the train, part of the Rotterdam Metro network, had been unable to stop as it reached its terminus and overran the track. Rather than fall more than 30 feet to the ground, the train was brought to a stop by one of two whale tail sculptures at the end of the track. The driver of the train was able to escape. He visited a hospital as a precautionary measure, according to local media reports. Dutch emergency services have told reporters there were no other passengers aboard. The artwork’s official name, “Saved by the Whale’s Tail,” now seems apt. Made out of plastic and installed in 2002, its designer seemed surprised it could hold a moving train. “It has been there for almost 20 years,” architect Maarten Struijs told NOS. “You actually expect the plastic to disintegrate a bit, but that apparently is not the case.” Struijs told the Dutch broadcaster that the event was a “miracle” and that he was impressed by how artistic the train looked on his creation. “I’ll make sure that I get a few photos,” Struijs said. The architect is not alone in admiring the unusual sight. Photos from social media suggest that the crash has become a point of interest for curious locals. Experts said it was unclear why the train had not been stopped by automatic buffers at the end of the track. “I don’t understand how this can happen,” Rob Goverde, professor of rail traffic engineering at TU Delft, told Algemeen Dagblad. "Apparently something went wrong technically, possibly combined with human error.” Authorities must now figure out how to remove the train from its perch. It is not clear how long the plastic structure can support the carriage, but lifting the train could prove difficult, as the track lies directly above water. Dutch emergency services said that a group of experts had arrived at the scene on Monday to see if the train needed to be secured before removal. “Given the complexity [of the task], this will take some time,” a website for Rijnmond emergency services warned, adding that people visiting the

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Getting to the polls can be hard in Navajo Nation. This woman is leading voters on horseback.

Allie Young saddled up, slid her feet into stirrups and started on a two-hour trail through her homeland of Navajo Nation, with a group of eager early voters in tow. They were heading to the polls on horseback. There are only a few available polling stations for Navajo voters, many of whom have limited access to transportation. Frustrated by the barriers that discourage voting among Indigenous people, Young, 30, hatched a plan. She started “Ride to the Polls” in early October, hoping to empower Native American youth to vote in the 2020 election while connecting with their cultural heritage. She leads groups on horseback along a 10-mile route from Church Rock in Navajo County to the polling stations in Kayenta, Ariz. The Navajo Nation spans 27,000 square miles, and occupies portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Horseback riding is common in the community. Young led a group of 15 Navajo voters on horseback on Oct. 20, most of whom range in age from 18 to 30. When they arrived at the polling station, they were met by a crowd of Native American people who were there to cast their ballots, too, after hearing about Ride to the Polls through social media and word of mouth. Before saddling up, Young’s mother carefully tied a traditional Diné sash around her waist and outfitted her in customary beaded jewelry. “I am doing this to honor our ancestors who fought for our right to vote, so I wanted to wear traditional clothes,” Young said. Native American communities historically have faced barriers and inconveniences in the voting process that discourage them from voting. They were not given voting rights in every U.S. state until 1962, and have had problems since, including in the 2018 midterm elections, when many tribal ID cards were deemed invalid. Today, poor access to voter registration offices and polling stations, limited transportation and excessive mail delays, among other logistical hurdles, makes voting in the U.S. election burdensome for many in tribal communities. Complicating matters, some in the community live miles from their closest neighbor and do not have a mailbox or street address. But Native Americans potentially have the political force to shift the outcome of the election, particularly in Arizona. There are 67,000 eligible Navajo voters in the swing state, and their vote could prove pivotal in the polls. OJ Semans, co-executive director of Four Directions, a nonpartisan organization

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As Election Day approaches, many Americans abroad are grateful for the distance

The past four years have not always been an easy time to be an American overseas, and the run up to the 2020 presidential election is no exception. International approval of the United States, according to a Pew survey of 13 countries, has spiraled to the lowest levels since the organization began tracking it. The trend has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. response to which has alarmed experts around the world and ground much international travel to a standstill, disrupting the lives of those split between countries. The chaotic election season has stoked perceptions of decline. A half-dozen Americans based outside the United States told The Washington Post that a defining aspect of life abroad in recent times has been watching attitudes toward America shift. Yet they expressed a degree of happiness to be overseas for the election, watching from afar as fraught politics destroy friendships and strain families. Those interviewed expressed relative investment in the election, echoing a broader trend: The U.S. Vote Foundation, a nonprofit voter assistance organization, told The Post that it had received a higher-than-normal influx of queries, as voters fret over making sure their ballots get counted amid consular disruptions and postal slowdowns. According to a report by Vice, nearly every state expects to see a year-over-year spike in turnout among overseas voters, typically a disengaged demographic. Donald and Maria Williams, 77 and 78, who have voted in every U.S. presidential election since they retired and moved from Arkansas to Mexico 14 years ago, said they were especially worried that their vote would get lost or fail to arrive in time. Normally, the couple would submit their ballots by means of a diplomatic pouch organized by the U.S. Consulate, bound for Washington, to be sent on via the U.S. Postal Service to their polling place in Little Rock. Not this year. “We just didn’t trust what was going on with the Postal Service,” Donald Williams told The Post from their home in the town of Tizapan el Alto. Instead, they drove some 50 miles to the nearest FedEx store, in Guadalajara. Many Americans overseas share their worries. The coronavirus pandemic has spurred a heightened demand for absentee ballots, a burden for the U.S. Postal Service, which has seen delays and errors in delivering ballots to polling places. Although President Trump has alienated many Mexicans over the past four years, according to surveys

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The Health 202: Obamacare marketplaces survived Trump's term better than expected

and Dupree write. “The truth is that mortality rates have improved, but the accelerating spread of the virus is driving up the absolute numbers of deaths.” There's a spot of good news: Improved techniques for treating patients and new therapeutics have led to better outcomes for hospitalized patients. A recent study of more than 5,000 patients from researchers at NYU Langone Health found the death rate dropped from 25.6 percent in March to 7.6 percent in August. Nationally, the daily death toll remains below that seen in the initial spring wave of the pandemic, when more than 2,200 people were dying each day on average. But the trend is grim. A mashup of models being used by the Centers for Disease Control forecasts 248,796 total deaths by the end of the month, with more than 6,000 deaths a week until then. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, has expressed skepticism about the possibility of accurately predicting the death toll, but he said that he expects to see an increase in deaths over the fall and winter. “You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from covid. You know that, right?” Trump told a rally in Waterford Township, Mich., on Friday. “I mean, our doctors are very smart people ... so what they do is they say, 'I'm sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of covid.’ ” “Medical groups, including the American Medical Association, denounced Trump's assertion that doctors inflate the number of deaths. AMA President Susan Bailey called Trump's claim ‘malicious, outrageous and completely misguided’,” USA Today’s John Fritze reports. According to Johns Hopkins University, 230,000 people have died in the United States of covid-19. Data on excess deaths show even more striking numbers: Nearly 300,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic than would be expected in a typical year. “To imply that emergency physicians would inflate the number of deaths from this pandemic to gain financially is offensive, especially as many are actually under unprecedented financial strain as they continue to bear the brunt of covid-19," the American College of Emergency Physicians said on Friday. “Doctors and nurses go to work every day to save lives. They do their jobs. Donald Trump should stop attacking them and do his job," Biden told a drive-in rally in Minnesota on Friday. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health: Emergency room physician

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How to beat the covid blues

Regarding the Oct. 29 news article “Gloom settles over Europe as days darken, virus surges”: European nations are imposing shutdowns in the face of increasing novel coronavirus cases. Here, we are also seeing a rise in cases. No one was prepared for the first lockdown, but now we know what to expect, and there’s a short time to prepare. Get out there and stock up on craft supplies, books, games, exercise equipment. You read every book in your house and played every game till you’re sick of it? Get your local organization to hold a free book swap, then a craft swap, and a board-game and exercise-equipment swap. Gotten out of shape? Make neighborhood exercise buddies: “I’ll knock on your door at 9 a.m., then walk up the steps. You follow 10 steps behind. If I don’t show up, you check on me.” Cooking buddies: “I’ll bake a new recipe and drop off Monday. You do the same on Friday. Again, if you don’t show up, I’ll check on you.” Redeem this time. Jean Taylor Read more letters to the editor.

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Coronavirus caseload sets record in Virginia as infections jump across D.C. region

recording 148 new infections for each 100,000 residents. Neil J. Sehgal, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, said the rising caseloads aren’t a surprise to health officials. He said people want a sense of normalcy, which is leading to more behaviors conducive to the virus spreading. “People have relaxed their vigilance,” he said. “The virus doesn’t relax in the same way we do.” Sehgal also voiced concerns about family and social gatherings during the holidays, as well as the increase in travel during that period. He said any travel will bring an additional risk of contracting the virus, and urged residents to follow the same basic health precautions in place for months. “Ten days afterwards, we will know how vigilant people were,” he said. D.C. health officials on Monday added three states to the city’s list of locations considered “high-risk” for travel because of the pandemic, raising the number of states under the designation to 42. The growing number of states on the city’s travel advisory means 9 in 10 residents of the country would be required to isolate before nonessential travel in the nation’s capital. A state is considered high-risk if its seven-day rolling average of new cases is 10 or more per 100,000 people. Under an order from Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), anyone who comes to the city from a high-risk state for nonessential reasons must self-isolate for two weeks. Those who arrive in D.C. from one of the states for essential purposes are asked to monitor for symptoms for two weeks. No states were removed from the list Monday, but California, Oregon and New Jersey were added, while Maryland and Virginia remain exempt from the order. About 296 million Americans — roughly 90 percent of the population — live in states that are included in the city’s travel advisory. New York is by far the most populous state not included in the advisory. The greater Washington region Monday recorded seven additional deaths and 1,945 new coronavirus cases — ending a six-day streak with daily caseloads surpassing the 2,000 mark. Virginia added 1,026 cases and three deaths, Maryland added 850 cases and three deaths, and D.C. added 69 cases and one death. Despite the rise in caseloads, the rate of virus-related deaths has held relatively steady since July. Hospitalizations have ticked upward slightly in recent days. erin.cox@washpost.com

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IMF warns Group of 20 that more fiscal spending is needed amid pandemic downturn

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY The International Monetary Fund on Monday warned Group of 20 major economies that the coronavirus crisis is not over and called on the United States, Britain and other countries to increase the amount of fiscal spending planned. Premature withdrawal of fiscal support at a time of continued high rates of unemployment would “impose further harm on livelihoods and heighten the likelihood of widespread bankruptcies, which in turn could jeopardize the recovery,” senior IMF officials warned in a blog published Monday. The blog, titled, “The Crisis is Not Over, Keep Spending (Wisely),” said swift and unprecedented action by G-20 and emerging market economies had averted an even deeper crisis, with G-20 countries alone providing $11 trillion in support. The IMF last month forecast a 2020 global contraction of 4.4 percent and a return to growth of 5.2 percent in 2021, but warned that the situation remained dire and governments should not withdraw stimulus prematurely. On Monday, it said coronavirus infections were continuing to spread, but much of the fiscal support provided was now winding down, with cash transfers to households, deferred tax payments and temporary loans to businesses either having expired or being set to do so by year-end. “Larger support than currently projected is desirable next year in some economies,” the IMF said in a longer report. It pointed to Brazil, Mexico, Britain and the United States, citing large drops in employment and projected fiscal contractions. — Reuters RETAIL America’s ailing malls suffered a pair of body blows over the weekend as two major landlords followed their ever-growing list of bankrupt tenants into Chapter 11 protection. Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust and CBL & Associates Properties sought protection from creditors Sunday, citing pandemic-induced pressures on their tenants and, in turn, themselves. Together the two REITs account for some 87 million square feet of real estate across the United States, according to court papers. The pandemic worsened an already dire situation for bricks-and-mortar retailers, with a steady stream of chains falling victim as their customers shifted to online shopping. J.C. Penney, J. Crew Group and the owner of Ann Taylor are among the dozens of chains that have sought court protection since covid-19 shutdowns throttled in-store shopping this year. That’s an even bigger problem for the likes of PREIT and CBL, which own less productive malls than rivals such as Simon Property Group and Macerich, according to Bloomberg Intelligence

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Where to find Thanksgiving takeout in D.C., whether you’re dining solo or with a small group

The Thanksgiving holiday usually revolves around travel and home-cooked meals, but this year is an exception. If the coronavirus pandemic has you staying in town, and if you’re completely sick of meal prep at this point, you can still enjoy a plate of turkey with all the trimmings. Here’s where to find a Thanksgiving dinner to-go in the D.C. area, whether you’ll be virtually eating with family members during a communal Zoom, planning a small outdoor Friendsgiving feast, or just wanting to outsource the stuffing. Order early, if possible — some spots, such as Denizens Brewing Co., have already sold out their Thanksgiving meals. Note: Many of these restaurants offer meals for a variety of group sizes; check the websites for more information. 1789 Preorder by: Pick up: Clyde’s restaurants throughout the area are serving a $32.99 traditional turkey dinner for one that has all the bases covered (including white and dark turkey meat, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and a choice of pie). Sister fine dining restaurant 1789 in Georgetown goes a bit fancier with a $75 Thanksgiving meal for the solo diner, including chestnut stuffing and roasted honey nut squash soup with dessert choices including pumpkin cheesecake. 1789restaurant.com; clydes.com. Convivial Preorder by: Pick up: Thanksgiving dinner for one at chef Cedric Maupillier’s French bistro in Shaw is a $58 three-course affair, beginning with a choice of soup or salad (or venison country pâté) leading into a turkey plate that includes mashed potatoes, chestnut and mushroom stuffing and yam gratin and then decidedly American dessert options such as apple pie. convivialdc.com. Pop’s SeaBar Preorder by: Pick up: This Jersey Shore-themed Adams Morgan spot is throwing out all the rules and serving lobster instead of turkey. (Why not?) The Zoom conversation-starter $31.99 platter for one includes a hefty lobster with drawn butter, corn and German potato salad on the side. popsseabar.com. Bresca Preorder by: Pick up: Brioche stuffing is on the menu at 14th Street’s Michelin-starred Bresca, where a $125 Thanksgiving meal for two includes a portion of heritage turkey accompanied by such sides as two casseroles (green bean and sweet potato) and milk bread loaves with port wine cranberry jam. The meal includes an apple galette for dessert. brescadc.com. Sababa Preorder by: Pick up: For something a little different, Israeli restaurant Sababa’s three-course Thanksgiving dinner for two involves turkey kofta kebabs and tahini green bean casserole, ending with pumpkin spice

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Transcript: Transformers: 5G

the federal government isn't necessarily on board with cities using this transition to 5G to leverage this kind of change. MAYOR LICCARDO: Yeah, I think, you know, the FCC under this administration has certainly been very industry friendly. And the perspective of many in the industry is what we really need is federal mandates that essentially tell cities, you better approve all these permits, get all these small cells up on the poles, get out of the way, and don't charge us anything for it. We need rapid deployment that doesn't cost us anything and we need you to move at the speed of light. And the challenge of course is that it actually takes human beings to approve the permits, ensure that the installations are safe, get them up on poles, and that costs resources. And as a result, we have really two different models of moving forward. We certainly know there are some cities that have been resisting unduly and charging excessive fees in trying to extract a lot of concessions that probably aren't appropriate. But what we also know is that the only way this is going to work, if we believe this should really function as a public utility is that either the government needs to ensure that there is equitable deployment of this technology and this infrastructure. And that may require, for example, the industry to step up or may require the federal government to step up, but one way or another we need more equitable deployment. And if we don't believe that this is a public utility, then it seems to me that we should expect that the industry would be subjected to all the vagaries of a market and cities should be able to charge whatever fees they want. Now, I don't think the extreme--any of us believe that that's the best outcome. I think what we'd like to see is a more collaborative approach in which industry and government recognize the imperative of moving very quickly. Let's charge fees that are appropriate, that help pay for the basic staff that's required to put these in place, but ensure that we can deploy these equitably. MR. MARKS: You know, in the second half of this program, we're going to turn to the national security concerns with 5G, and the U.S. is really in a race with China and with a lot of the

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Transcript: Transformers: 5G

intellectual property, and certainly the data that, you know, enables adversaries to influence our population, now you're talking about the crown jewels of our society. And to say that AT&T or any company is going to protect that data as much as you would want standards that were as robust as the military is for protecting data to ensure that those crown jewels don't fall to our adversaries. MR. MARKS: Diane, you've talked--said that people generally go with the supplier that is cheapest and that these other concerns tend to be more ancillary. And yet, the U.S. has not completely struck out in its efforts to get allies to steer clear of Huawei and ZTE. You know, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and increasingly chunks of Europe, although not all of it, and many of them have made little compromises, why is that? MS. RINALDO: I think people--again, it is 2020 and people understand the national security concerns of what using one vendor over another means for their networks. It's important that we are able to educate, that we're able to share information, and we're doing that. I would say in the past ten years the United States has gone above and beyond to ensure that our allies around the world are properly--that they have the ability to have the same type of intelligence that we have in our country and that we share that information and that they know the possibilities of having an unsecure, untrusted vendor in their networks and what that could do to them. You know, it is vital to our not only national security, but we all understand at this day and age that national security and economic security run hand-in-hand. So, I think you have to be cautious on how you deal with issues of national security. You know, it is not a binary choice, that if there is a national security concern that maybe the government should take it all in house. You tend to the issues that you're currently dealing with. The United States has flourished under its current competitive innovation model. Would we upend that? No, of course not. We tend to it. As part of my former duties at the House Intelligence Committee, we worked on the Cyber Information Sharing Act, which was passed into law in 2015, which allows companies to share threat vectors with one another without fear of

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Oregon decriminalizes possession of hard drugs, as four other states legalize recreational marijuana

PORTLAND, Ore. — The epiphany came in 2009, as Hubert Matthews prepared to spend another night on Portland’s streets. For two decades he had been using drugs, then committing crimes to get more. He wanted out, but he saw no easy escape. His frequent use made him an easy target for police, leaving him a homeless, middle-aged man trapped by his addiction and the laws he broke to feed it. “I had to take a hard look at myself and say ‘I’m 47 years old and I don’t have anything going. I’m not a kingpin. I don’t have a job. I’m just a dope fiend,’” Matthews said. “I was getting arrested a lot for possession and little stuff over and over again to where my criminal record caused me to not be able to get a job, to not be able to get an apartment.” Matthews, who is now a recovering addict and a drug abuse counselor, believes others will have an easier path after Oregon voters approved a controversial ballot measure decriminalizing possession of small amounts of so-called hard drugs, including cocaine, heroin, oxycodone and methamphetamines. Measure 110 also applies marijuana sales taxes toward payments for drug addiction treatment. Marijuana has been legal in Oregon since 2015. Oregon also joined the District of Columbia in decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms. Four other states — New Jersey, Arizona, Montana and South Dakota — voted on Tuesday to legalize recreational marijuana, and Mississippi legalized cannabis for medical use. In total, nearly a third of the states have now eased the criminal consequences of marijuana use, though federal law still prohibits it. Nearly 40 years after the start of the nation’s War on Drugs, Oregon’s upvote puts it at the forefront of shifting American attitudes about what communities should do about drug abuse. Proponents of decriminalization say it offers a remedy to a costly campaign that has done little improve society but has wreaked havoc on minority communities. An Oregon study showed that Black and Native American people were more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than White people, creating a record that follows low-level drug users around for the rest of their lives. Oregon’s measure, which passed with almost 60 percent support, goes further than other states that have increasingly eased restrictions on drug use. Measure 110 decriminalizes hard drugs often associated with crippling addiction and social decay. In favoring rehabilitation over

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Ethiopia sends troops into renegade northern province as long-simmering tensions explode

reports of clashes, it said. Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers declared a six-month state of emergency in Tigray, asserting federal authority over the region. The TPLF once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition before Abiy took office in 2018 and the party was sidelined. Tensions with Tigray escalated in recent months after the region went ahead with its own local elections even though all polls were suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. On Oct. 7, Ethiopian lawmakers voted to withhold budget support from Tigray, a move that one Tigrayan official said was “tantamount to a declaration of war.” Most of Ethiopia’s military equipment is in Tigray because of a long-running war against neighboring Eritrea, which ended in 2018, when the countries signed a peace deal. Now, Abiy, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his reform efforts in Ethiopia and peace overtures to Eritrea, is trying to dislodge the Tigrayan-linked old guard elements from the military. A statement on Tigray TV attributed to the regional government accused the federal government of deploying troops to “invade Tigray to cow the people of Tigray into submission by force,” the Associated Press reported. It said the regional government had started to oppose the federal government to avert more destructive measures.” It warned of “proportional measures” for any damage to people or property. “This war is the worst possible outcome of tensions that have been brewing,” said William Davison, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “Given Tigray’s relatively strong security position, the conflict may well be protracted and disastrous,” he said. A war could “seriously strain an Ethiopian state already buffeted by multiple grave political challenges and could send shock waves into the Horn of Africa region and beyond,” he added. Conflict in Tigray would further increase instability in Ethiopia and add to a host of recent crises that Abiy’s government has faced, including tensions with Egypt over an Ethiopian dam project on the Blue Nile and a locust outbreak across East Africa. As the country has opened and political reforms have taken hold, ethnic and other political violence has also flared up. At least 54 people from the ethnic Amhara group were killed in a schoolyard by rebels Sunday, according to Amnesty International. The government blamed the Oromo Liberation Army for the attack in the far western part of Oromia near the border with South Sudan. Tigrayans dominated Ethiopian politics after helping to

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The Daily 202: Trump’s demand that courts block the counting of ballots fits with pattern of litigiousness

limit the spread of the virus. … “Nearly 89,000 new infections were reported Tuesday, bringing the U.S. total to more than 9.3 million cases. The virus continued its surge through the Midwest and Plains states. Seven states set records for hospitalizations of patients with covid-19 … including Indiana, Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin." The president's win can be attributed to his inroads among Latinos in Miami-Dade County. Trump lost the county by 30 points in 2016. On Tuesday, he kept his deficit to the single digits, percentage wise. Four years ago, 62 percent of Latinos in the state backed Hillary Clinton, with just 35 percent voting for Trump. This year, Biden held a much narrower edge among the state’s Latino voters, just 52 percent to 47 percent in preliminary exit poll results, Jocelyn Kiley reports. Trump improved his performance among voters ages 30-44 as well: This group went for Clinton in 2016 but roughly split their votes between Biden and Trump this year. Notably, consistent with pre-election surveys, Trump lost some ground among older voters in the Sunshine State compared with four years ago. “Trump’s campaign went from largely ignoring Hispanic voters in 2016 to making them a focus of his 2020 campaign,” the Miami Herald reports. "Within weeks of his inauguration, Trump began making overtures to Cuban Americans in Miami, rolling back [Barack Obama’s] normalization of relations with Cuba’s communist government and warning of the specter of socialism coming to the U.S. … Trump consolidated much of the Cuban-American vote, winning over not only older, more conservative exiles, but also new arrivals who’d leaned toward Obama in 2012. … Trump also made inroads with Latino voters who hail from other parts of Latin America, including Venezuela and Colombia, as he consistently campaigned against the specter of socialism.” Analysts faulted the Biden campaign for treating the Latino community like a monolith. “While Biden performed well in the state’s metropolitan regions, he struggled to gain steam among Hispanic and Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley and to overcome Trump’s strength in the rural areas of the state, the Texas Tribune reports. 'A Democratic presidential candidate has not won statewide in Texas since 1976. While few in the party anticipated Biden would win Texas on Tuesday, they expressed hope that a close enough margin could help down-ballot candidates and lay the foundation for future Democratic gains across the state. But many competitive

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The Health 202: States split on abortion measures but advanced marijuana legalization

The election may not be resolved for days, even as Trump falsely asserted election fraud overnight and threatened to go to the Supreme Court to get “all voting to stop.” (As The Post notes, however, lawsuits to challenge state election procedures and practices would have to be filed in lower-level courts. And while voting has stopped, counting has not.) The situation is a nail-biter, to say the least – including for members of Trump’s own administration who are deeply frustrated by its turbulence and the president’s recent threats to fire top health officials and political appointees as part of a second-term purge. “I’d like to have some nails left to stab myself with tomorrow,” a senior administration official told me last night. Voters in New Jersey, Arizona and Montana backed measures to legalize recreational marijuana, while South Dakota became the first state to approve both recreational and medical marijuana at the same time. Mississippians, meanwhile, voted to create a medical marijuana program that will allow doctors to prescribe marijuana to patients with 22 qualifying conditions. “A decade ago, recreational marijuana was illegal in all 50 states. Voters allowed it in Colorado and Washington in 2012, sparking a movement that already included 11 states and Washington, D.C., heading into Tuesday’s elections. Supporters hope additional victories, especially in conservative states, could build pressure for Congress to legalize marijuana nationwide,” the Associated Press's David A. Lieb writes. The push to relax drug laws was not limited to marijuana. Oregon also became the first state to approve the therapeutic use of psychedelic mushrooms. D.C. voters approved a measure that would move towards decriminalizing psychedelic plants, including psilocybin-containing mushrooms, by making them among the police's lowest enforcement priority. Incumbent GOP governor Mike Parsons won reelection in Missouri against his Democratic challenger, state Auditor Nicole Galloway. The race was seen as the best chance for Democrats to flip a governor seat. State governors are particularly crucial amid the coronavirus pandemic, due to their key role in coordinating testing and treatment supplies and distributing a vaccine. The win by Parson, who has taken a largely hands-off approach to the pandemic, means he will oversee efforts to coordinate a likely statewide vaccination campaign in the coming year. “[T]he virus dominated the governor’s race and became a lens through which other issues, such as the economy and healthcare, were seen. Missouri has reported more than 188,000 cases over the

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How newspaper front pages treated an Election Day with no clear winner

to information, Moos said. Especially in the Internet age, she said, most people know the facts by the time they look at a newspaper and are seeking to learn what those facts mean or what comes next. Editors, for their part, have to make decisions about their front pages that will still be accurate in the morning. Their choices, Moos said, are about how to frame what is known for the historical record. “They’re making a decision knowing that it can’t be wrong, and it also needs to convey some kind of context or forward look so that it’s relevant the next morning,” she said. Wednesday’s front pages were largely subdued, with cautious language, dark colors and few exclamation marks. Moos said those themes contrasted with how newspapers have treated the results in other election years, such as 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency. Then, front pages leaned heavily on the word “historic” and used exclamation points to remind readers that much of the country was enthusiastic about the result. Newspapers’ very different approach Wednesday was noteworthy, Moos said. She said it symbolizes the nationwide anxiety over what might come next, amid businesses boarding their windows and people stocking up on groceries to prepare for potential civil unrest. One newspaper took a different approach from most of its peers. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used a double-decker headline summarizing comments from both presidential candidates in the early morning hours: “Trump: I have won. Biden: It’s not over.” Below it was a photo of election workers counting ballots. The front page was met with swift backlash online from people who said the framing was likely to confuse Americans about the reality that the race was undecided, despite Trump’s false claim of victory. “Here’s a newspaper that disgraced itself last night,” tweeted Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and frequent press critic. “And since it’s the print edition, no way to correct or take it back. To title your next-day coverage with a false claim rather than a true fact is quite the spectacle, @ajc.” HuffPost reporter Michael Hobbes sarcastically tweeted a comparison: “One marathon runner declared himself the winner after 20 miles. The other runners say marathons are 26.2 miles. We’ll leave it up to you to decide.” Moos said the headline exemplified how a “both sides” approach to journalism — one that seeks neutrality by falsely framing two

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Maryland crime report

Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, the police department will take police reports for minor and nonviolent crimes by telephone. To increase social distancing, callers may be required to file a report online at aacounty.org when re porting the following crimes. If the crime is in progress, call 911 or 410-222-8610. •Destruction to a vehicle •Destruction of property/vandalism •Theft from a vehicle •Thefts of vehicle parts and accessories •Tampering with a vehicl e •Attempted vehicle thef t •Credit or debit card theft •Identify theft•Lost property •Telephone misuse •Trespassing The following were among incidents reported by Anne Arundel County police. For information, call 410-222-8050. Brooklyn Park Area Belle Grove Rd., Ritchie Hwy., Glen Burnie Area Warwickshire Lane, Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing the policedepartment has implemented a policy of telephone reporting for relatively minor and nonviolent crimes. Callers will be screened, and when appropriate for telephone reporting an officer will collect information. The non-emergency phone number is 410-268-4141. Ashton Ct., Madison St., Edelmar Dr., Forest Dr., Forest Hills Ave., Gemini Dr., Heritage Ct., Hilltop Lane, S. Monroe St., Stonecreek Rd., Youngs Farm Rd., Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, citizens are encouraged to report certain incidents online at hcpd.org or by calling 410-313-2200. These were among incidents reported by Howard County police. Columbia Area Cedar Lane, Lee Deforest Dr., Nightmist Ct., Stevens Forest Rd., Area of Murray Hill Rd., Area of Waterloo Rd., Black Star Cir., Farstar Pl., Sea Shadow, Turnabout Lane, Wincopin Cir., Green Mountain Cir., Twin Rivers Rd., Elkridge Area Gateway Overlook Dr., Ellicott City Area Baltimore National Pike, Cotoneaster Dr., Pine Orchard Lane, Bonnie Branch Rd., Montgomery Rd., Jessup Area Willowwood Way, Laurel Area Forest Gates Path, High Ridge Rd.,

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Patrick Mahomes helped pay the cost of opening Arrowhead Stadium for voting

And so we, the Chiefs organization, the Hunt family [which owns the team] and Patrick Mahomes and his 15 and the Mahomies Foundation came together and said, ‘If that’s what it’s going to take, we’re committed to this point. Let’s go.’ ” Mahomes, 25, said he was voting for the first time and, in a team meeting on voting initiatives over the summer, realized that he hadn’t properly registered. Now the face of the NFL, Mahomes was part of a group of players whose video statement following the death of George Floyd helped sway Commissioner Roger Goodell to film a video in which he admitted that the league was late to understand why players knelt during the national anthem and to say that Black lives matter. Mahomes, who signed a 10-year, $503-million contract extension with the Chiefs five months after winning the Super Bowl, also established roots in Kansas City, purchasing a stake in the Royals. “I love this city and the people of this great town,” he said in late July, when he made the purchase. This opportunity allows me to deepen my roots in this community, which is something I’m excited to do.” NFL teams typically are off on Tuesdays and the league took the additional step of closing facilities and offices this Tuesday to encourage voting, something it and the NFL Players Association advocated. Last week, that initiative resulted in the league and NFLPA saying that 90 percent of players had registered to vote. Stadiums and arenas around the country became polling sites. “I thought Arrowhead was the perfect place for it, and the Chiefs were all aboard with it and some other guys on the team,” Mahomes said, “We all just made our efforts strong and really got it to be a central point for everybody to go vote.” According to Donovan, costs that he described as “a six-figure investment by us” were split and may have an effect on voting in Kansas City for years to come. “We’ll work with the election board on exactly how we can expand and what makes the most sense in terms of how many elections,” he said. “We actually were having that conversation earlier today in between voting activities. And like I said, if you actually come here and see what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, there’s a lot of interest in utilizing this a lot more.”

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Coronavirus updates: United States tops 100,000 new virus cases in a day for first time

Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana and West Virginia — reported record-high numbers of current covid-19 inpatients, according to data tracked by The Post. “We are again in danger of losing control of this pandemic in Iowa,” Suresh Gunasekaran, chief executive of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, wrote in an urgent appeal to the state’s residents. “Our COVID positivity rates skyrocketed twice before, but this is the first time we have seen rates this high while also dealing with record patient hospitalizations.” Some hospitals in the St. Louis and Omaha metropolitan areas have started rescheduling elective surgeries to free up beds, while the head of the Arkansas Hospital Association said at a briefing Tuesday that the state was facing a critical shortage of health-care workers as states furiously compete for nurses. Facing a sweeping second wave of infections, more European countries have ramped up restrictions as the continent’s tally of infections has surpassed 11 million. The Netherlands banned public gatherings with more than two people from different households, while Hungary shuttered bars and issued a nightly curfew, according to Reuters. British lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted for a month-long nationwide lockdown in England, to start Thursday. Unlike the one in the spring, schools and universities will remain open. But pubs, restaurants, gyms and nonessential businesses will close for four weeks. Until recently, the administration of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was reticent to impose a nationwide lockdown, preferring instead a targeted, regional approach. But Johnson said that, when confronted with fresh data showing cases and hospitalizations climbing rapidly, he had to act. “The curve is already unmistakable,” he told Parliament. The politicians opposed to the new lockdown — many from Johnson’s own party — say they are too severe and will hurt the economy and civil liberties. Kate Bingham, chair of Britain’s coronavirus vaccine task force, told Parliament on Wednesday that data on the two leading vaccine candidates — developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and by Pfizer and BioNtech — should be available by December, the Associated Press reported. World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that while a coronavirus vaccine is needed, other underlying problems that afflict nations worldwide are just as pressing. “The need for a #COVID19 vaccine is very real,” he wrote on Twitter. “But it will not fix the vexing vulnerabilities afflicting us all. There’s no vaccine for poverty,

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Ted Leonsis has lost three friends to suicide. He doesn’t want to lose any more.

your community, tell your family, tell your friends. We are going to end up with a big, big issue if we don’t talk about it.” So Leonsis is talking about it. We know that more than 1.2 million people have died worldwide of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. It’s an enormous number, one that would have seemed incomprehensible at this point 10 months ago. Yet take a guess as to how many people take their own lives each year. According to the World Health Organization, it’s around 800,000 — or one every 40 seconds. Plus, the WHO says, “There are indications that for each adult who died by suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide.” And that’s without a pandemic further coloring people’s moods or driving them to addictions. Leonsis’s experiences are poignant personally and pertinent in the moment. In each case, he said, the call with the news of his friend’s suicide floored him. But he noticed, too, common themes. Not only were these friends unwilling to talk about their problems before they took drastic action, but the way they died wasn’t discussed in the aftermath. Their families and friends couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about it. That’s both completely understandable and absolutely damaging. “So we’re on rinse-and-repeat mode,” Leonsis said. “And now the pandemic hits, and we have every single day a hammering on our collective psyche of anxiety, depression. Whatever’s going to happen to our collective and individual mental health could be, in terms of numbers, as bad or worse than the actual pandemic. But we won’t really face it.” What does this have to do with sports? Leonsis, as we all should, worries about his family and friends. But, as we all should, he worries, too, about the players who perform for us — the players who work for his three professional teams. For generations, athletes have been trained not to show vulnerability. That’s both physically, by playing through pain, and mentally, maintaining focus despite external distractions. But in 2020, suppressing those emotions feels neither healthy nor realistic. And yet opening up remains a struggle. Back in the summer, when Major League Baseball was navigating a shortened season in which games were played in front of empty ballparks and players endured the stresses of regular virus testing coupled with travel, I wrote about the mental strains of trying to perform under

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Australia has almost eliminated the coronavirus — by putting faith in science

Melbourne is located. After a sick doctor in his 70s treated more than 70 people in the city before being diagnosed, Hunt accelerated a 10-year plan to phase in video consultations with physicians. Within 10 days, almost anyone in Australia could see a doctor over the Internet under Australia's highly subsidized health-care system, including psychiatrists. When private hospitals said they were in danger of going broke because non-urgent surgery had been canceled, the government stepped in with emergency funding, securing beds that could be used for coronavirus patients. In private, Hunt swapped ­practical stories with his wife, Paula Hunt, a former infectious-diseases nurse who kept a 1995 bestseller by U.S. science journalist Laurie Garrett, "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance," on her bedside table, he said. "It's valuable to have a very strong sounding board," he said. The coordination was not always smooth, and lapses did occur. Federal officials were uncomfortable with Melbourne's extreme lockdown and felt the state border closures went too far. Hunt, Morrison and federal health advisers tried to criticize the rules without undermining overall confidence in the response. While opinion polls show strong support for the tough measures, many people have been badly affected. Australia entered its first recession in 29 years, small businesses have closed, and reports of depression are up. On Tuesday, an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne turned violent. Police arrested 404 people. And for a time, it appeared Australia's early success was imperiled, after lax security at hotels in Melbourne that were housing returned travelers led to a second outbreak in July. By August, more than 700 cases a day were diagnosed. It looked like Australia could lose control of the virus. Almost all public life in Melbourne ended. After 111 days of lockdown, the number of average daily cases fell below five. On Oct. 28, state officials allowed residents to leave their homes for any reason. Australia currently bans its citizens and residents from overseas travel, a decision that has been particularly tough on its 7.5 million immigrants. On Oct. 16, Australia opened its border to New Zealand, which, despite limited outbreaks, never experienced a full second wave. The government is awaiting results of four vaccine trials in which it has invested. Most Australians will have access to a vaccine by the middle of next year, Hunt said, a major step toward allowing them to travel.

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From ‘Surrender Dorothy’ to ‘Surrender Donald’: The Beltway bridge has a new message

The Washington region’s favorite canvas for pithy commentary bears a new message, one that gives voice to a sentiment more than half the country apparently feels. An unknown person or people went out on the CSX railroad bridge over the Capital Beltway near the Mormon Temple in Kensington, Md., and daubed it with “Surrender Donald.” It’s just the latest bit of graffiti scrawled on the bridge. Most have referenced the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints house of worship that rises, Emerald City-like, in the background. This isn’t the first time “Surrender Donald” has been on the bridge. In August 2018, an anti-GOP prankster from Montgomery County named Claude Taylor helped arrange for two men to place three-foot-high magnetic letters on the bridge spelling out the same message. The words were visible to motorists on the Outer Loop below. “You have to have been in D.C. for some period of time to kind of get it,” Taylor told me then. “This is an inside joke for sure.” It’s an inside joke that’s been rattling around the Beltway for at least 40 years. Many old-timers remember when it read “Surrender Dorothy.” Those words didn’t seem like an act of political commentary so much as an act of whimsy. (To be fair, the Mormons never found it that whimsical.) It’s never been revealed who first painted “Surrender Dorothy” on the bridge, but we know where they got the idea: from a baker’s dozen of gently vandalistic Catholic schoolgirls. In 2011, I spoke with Chris Brennan and Ann Cassidy Principe, both of whom attended Holy Child, a parochial girls’ school in Potomac, Md. In October 1974, 13 Holy Child classmates had a sleepover at the McLean, Va., home of Maureen Leonard O’Grady. During the night, they sneaked out, drove to the Linden Lane overpass near the CSX bridge and inserted wadded-up newspaper in the chain link fence there, spelling out “Surrender Dorothy.” Holy Child happened to be doing “The Wizard of Oz” for its school play that year. “We thought it was brilliant,” Brennan, Holy Child Class of 1975, said of their prank. Montgomery Journal staff photographer Hoke Kempley snapped a picture. It ran with the headline “Wicked Witch of the Beltway.” Some time later, the words were painted in white on the green railroad bridge. A tradition began: As soon as “Surrender Dorothy” was painted over, vandals would repaint it. I

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A local’s guide to Dubrovnik, Croatia

385 91 205 3488 website: Twitter: instagram: barba.dubrovnik Carbon Graphite Products Factory, located in the Port Gruž area, is one of the preeminent enduring monuments of the city’s communist era. Still owned by the workers, the factory now partly houses the Red History Museum, a mandatory stop for all who are interested in what everyday life was like in Dubrovnik during that Yugoslavian period. The small museum is interactive, run by young local enthusiasts and very educational. BTW: address: Ul. Svetog Križa 3, 20000, Dubrovnik, Croatia latlng: phone: website: https://www.redhistorymuseum.com/ Twitter: instagram: redhistorymuseum Steps away from Love Bar and the TUP Complex, Dubrovnik Beer Company hosts brewery tours that allow you to witness the magic of craft-beer production firsthand. The brews here are all unfiltered and unpasteurized — and if you prefer to cut to the point, you can taste them in the tap room, straight from the source. On some nights, there’s even live music. BTW: address: Obala pape Ivana Pavla II 15, 20000, Dubrovnik, Croatia latlng: phone: 00 385 95 356 9620 website: http://www.dubrovackapivovara.hr/ Twitter: dubrovnikbeer instagram: Peppino’s is a perfect place to regain your energy after climbing the numerous steps of the Old City. Located in the heart of the district, the popular shop is known for its gelato’s full and creamy flavor, as well as its variety: Whether you choose yogo strawberry, choco Oreo, pistachio, or Fererro Rocher premium, you can’t go wrong. BTW: address: Ulica od puča 9, 20000, Dubrovnik, Croatia latlng: phone: website: http://www.peppinos.premis.hr/ Twitter: instagram: peppino_s Formerly the area where Dubrovnik housed those with the plague, this spot today is the most popular local beach in the vicinity of the Old City. Danče is not a long, sandy beach, but rather a massive rock formation with a few plateaus where locals like to play mini-football barefoot or soak up the sun with a glass of gemišt, a mix of white wine and mineral water. With ladder access to the water, the beach is great for cliff-jumping. BTW: address: latlng: 42°38′26.3″N 18°06′04.1″E phone: website: Twitter: instagram: Gruž, formerly a factory-laden industrial zone in communist Yugoslavia, is a walkable district with a lot of local spirit, old aristocratic summer villas and a charming promenade along the sea. Somewhere in the middle of that promenade, you will find Dubrovnik’s biggest green market and the fish market in its background. And while tourists crowd most other parts

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Coronavirus testing and sanitized snorkels: How all-inclusive resorts are adapting to the pandemic

Between high-octane election anxiety and covid-19 fears, for Americans who are comfortable traveling, all-inclusive resorts may be more appealing than ever. Aside from the well-documented risks of traveling during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s a vacation traditionally designed for less stress; just show up and unwind. “I just figured it’d be nice to be in one place, not moving around,” says Lee Abbamonte, a travel blogger who’s visited every country and both poles. Abbamonte has stayed in all-inclusive resorts during the pandemic. “Also [staying at an all-inclusive] stops prices from going through the roof like it can at regular hotels, regarding drinks and food and stuff like that.” Anthony Melchiorri, the CEO of Argeo Hospitality and host of Travel Channel’s “Hotel Impossible,” says the transparent pricing of all-inclusives is particularly appealing at a time when many Americans are facing economic hardships. And that appeal may last beyond the pandemic. “One of the things during coronavirus, and even after, is people are on a tight budget right now,” Melchiorri says. “People were unemployed for a while, some people are still unemployed. So going to an all-inclusive, they know what to expect. They know how much it’s going to cost them." Of course, not all of resorts are low-cost accommodations. The category ranges from budget-friendly to extremely luxurious. And these days, the latter price tag doesn’t just buy travelers high-thread-count sheets and fine dining — it can also promise an elevated sense of security. ÀNI Private Resorts are beachfront or cliff-side properties in Anguilla, Dominican Republic, Sri Lanka and Thailand that are rented out to one group at a time. “We’ve been operating with this concept from day one, and with the pandemic and covid, all of a sudden we’re feeling super well positioned,” says ÀNI chief executive Ira Bloom. “People are just much more interested in having places to themselves.” The appeal of getting away without being near strangers is showing itself in ÀNI’s Caribbean bookings, where nightly rates this winter begin at $6,550. “The calendar just keeps getting filled up with groups, that I guess have been super eager to get out in a way,” Bloom says. Each ÀNI guest in the group must show proof of a negative coronavirus test before arrival at the property. The resort staff are also tested before arrival to the property, where they then live for the duration of a group’s visit. But coronavirus testing

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Coronavirus testing and sanitized snorkels: How all-inclusive resorts are adapting to the pandemic

Bustos says the biggest change guests would notice while dining at the property is the spacing between seating. The resort limits how many diners can be in restaurants at a time and avoids putting large parties near each other. The same is true for activities like boating trips, which have been limited to 50 percent occupancy. Bungalows Key Largo has kept other activities afloat by making sure rental equipment, like snorkel gear, gets extra sanitation between guest uses. Bustos says interest in such activities doesn’t seem to be diminished by the pandemic. In fact, at Sandals and Beaches Resorts, interest in scuba diving has actually increased during the pandemic. From July through September, diving certifications grew by 28 percent this year compared with 2019. As part of its Sandals Platinum Protocols of Cleanliness, the resort makes sure all diving and PADI equipment, as well as areas like pool decks, undergo frequent sanitization, and social distancing is required on boats and at pools. “Our job was to not change the Sandal’s experience while making sure that we kept everyone safe,” says Sandals deputy chairman Adam Stewart. When the pandemic hit, Velas Resorts developed a 15-page “Stay Safe With Velas” program with seven categories of health and sanitary measures. Guided by the World Health Organization and the government of Mexico, the program includes installing touchless hand sanitizer dispensers around the property and implementing health screenings for both guests and staff, including temperature checks and “smell-sensory” tests. Juan Vela Ruiz, vice president of Velas Resorts, says some of those changes may be kept even after a vaccine is widely distributed. “They are good for overall health for both guests and staff,” Ruiz said in an email. “For instance, the daily health checks of employees on arrival to and departure from the resort ensures our team’s and their families’ safety. This is just one of the initiatives we plan on continuing.” Melchiorri says these elevated approaches to coronavirus protocols is what will help bring back business — not only for all-inclusives, but all hotels. “It shouldn’t look like I’m going into a hospital,” says Melchiorri. “It should look like I’m going on vacation.” Read more: A travel group report says flying is safe. The doctor whose research it cited says not so fast. Where can Americans travel to in the Caribbean? 7 private islands you can actually rent (even if you’re not a Kardashian)

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Military ballots could play greater role in narrow state counts

recent days of fraud and raised questions about a “mail-in ballot dump,” his campaign has said there “are and should be exceptions” for troops stationed overseas. U.S. troops have been voting by mail since the War of 1812 and, in larger numbers, the Civil War. In 2016, troops and their families sent more than 630,000 ballots. About 20,000 of those were rejected, mostly because they arrived too late. This year, military authorities urged troops to vote early because of postal delays related to the coronavirus pandemic. How military mail-in ballots are treated varies by state. According to research compiled by Count Every Hero, 28 states and the District of Columbia allow military ballots to be counted after Election Day. Among the states that are still counting, military ballots can be received up to 15 days after that date. Some states allow troops to vote by email or fax. In Arizona, state rules require that military ballots must be received by Election Day. Georgia, meanwhile, permits the processing of military ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 6. In Nevada, they must be postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 10. Pennsylvania requires them to be signed by Nov. 2 and received by Nov. 10. North Carolina requires them to be sent by 12:01 a.m. on Election Day and received by Nov 12. Finally, Alaska allows military ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. For those coming from within the United States, the deadline is Nov. 13; for those coming from overseas that are received by Nov 18. In a call Thursday organized by Count Every Hero, retired Gen. George Casey, who served as Army chief of staff during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, asked state officials to include assurances when they certify state votes that all service member ballots have been counted. “We ask so much of them, they deserve to know that their voices are heard,” he said. It was unclear Thursday how many more military ballots could arrive in battleground states, or how they could be affected by legal challenges. Some critical states have seen larger numbers of military absentee voters this year compared with the number in 2016. In North Carolina, 14,550 service members requested absentee ballots, with 9,750 returned as of Wednesday, said Caroline Myrick, a data analyst with the state board of elections. The number of ballot requests

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Virginia’s game against Louisville postponed after coronavirus cases among Cardinals

that stressed us a bit, and I think that there’s concern for the other linemen and also the fact that when you get into the training room, that’s a definite concern.” Virginia Coach Bronco Mendenhall did not have an immediate comment. The postponement marked yet another virus-related delay for the Cavaliers, who had season openers against Georgia and Virginia Military Institute canceled and another against Virginia Tech pushed back. The reigning ACC Coastal Division champions originally were set to open Sept. 7 against Georgia at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in a nationally televised prime-time showdown. Uncertainty surrounding the pandemic led to that game being scrapped. With the ACC moving to 10 conference games and one nonconference opponent for each school in an effort to salvage the season, the Cavaliers added VMI for the opener Sept. 11. That game was canceled when the Southern Conference voted not to play fall sports. Next on the schedule was Virginia Tech on Sept. 19, which would have marked the first time since 1970 the in-state rivals met in a season opener. A spike in positive tests within the Hokies’ locker room pushed that game to Dec. 12. A game at Clemson on Oct. 3 briefly became Virginia’s next scheduled opener until the ACC moved up a scheduled meeting with Duke to Sept. 26. The Cavaliers’ opener against the Blue Devils, a 38-20 victory, had been scheduled for Nov. 14. The postponement of Virginia-Louisville is the latest instance of the pandemic affecting scheduling in one of the Power Five conferences. Virginia Tech, for instance, was to open the season Sept. 12 against North Carolina State until the Wolfpack reported a spike in cases throughout its athletic department and paused all football-related activities. The game was moved to Sept. 26. The open date this weekend allows the Cavaliers additional time to prepare following an injury scare to quarterback Brennan Armstrong. The sophomore left this past weekend’s 44-41 win against then-No. 15 North Carolina late in the fourth quarter after absorbing a blow to his left leg. Armstrong limped off the field at Scott Stadium with help from the athletic training staff and did not reenter. Keytaon Thompson and Lindell Stone combined to run out the clock and end Virginia’s four-game slide, its longest in four years during the regular season. Mendenhall indicated Tuesday afternoon that Armstrong, who accounted for four touchdowns against North Carolina, was on

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How North Dakota became a covid-19 nightmare

in large outbreaks. The virus is everywhere, affecting every profession and demographic. We see high case counts among health-care workers, in congregate living facilities and among hospitality workers — but the outbreak isn’t limited to these occupations. Entire offices that do not have prevention protocols in place are being wiped out by the virus. Contact tracers have become overwhelmed. The North Dakota Department of Health recently announced the discontinuation of contact tracing, asking people who test positive to reach out to their own close contacts to notify them to quarantine. This change has likely added to covid-19’s spread across the state. Deaths have more than doubled in the past month, and hospitals are at capacity. Rural hospitals are especially challenged. Typically, their critically ill patients are transferred to larger cities in North Dakota, which have better-resourced care facilities. But as even our larger hospitals are swamped, patients from rural areas have been sent out of state for care. Families are left behind, wondering if their loved ones will recover and return home or remain hospitalized out of state and die alone. Health-care workers are being pushed to the brink caring for patients with no relief. Jeffrey Sather, medical director for Trinity Health’s Emergency Trauma Center in Minot, N.D., said recently that when he asks his colleagues how they’re holding up, they reveal a dreadful truth: “I have to watch someone suffocate to death, every day, and sometimes several times a day.” This leaves all of us on the front lines of this pandemic wondering what it will take for people to finally change their behavior. Astonishingly, there are still no statewide mitigation measures being enforced in North Dakota, leaving the task of stopping covid’s spread to local leaders. After a grueling six-hour meeting last week, the Bismarck City Commission voted 3 to 2 to approve a “pandemic mitigation strategy” requiring masks in public places and limiting social gatherings. The catch: There is no penalty for non-compliance. So while this is a step in the right direction, it won’t be enough to curb the contagion. What our situation demonstrates is that individual cities and counties cannot stop this pandemic themselves. North Dakota’s efforts should be coordinated and led by the state, with support from the federal government. We need a statewide mask mandate with strict enforcement measures, increased lab capacity to provide timely testing, and better contact tracing and education on

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World Digest: Nov. 6, 2020

RUSSIA The Kremlin said Friday that it was alarmed by a rise in coronavirus cases, but it was too early to judge the effectiveness of its policy of trying to contain the disease without a full lockdown. Russia reported a record daily tally of 20,582 new cases, bringing its total to 1,733,440 — the world’s fourth-largest behind the United States, India and Brazil. “The trend is alarming; the pandemic is developing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. Asked whether Russia’s measures had been effective in containing the virus without imposing lockdowns, Peskov said: “It is probably too early to talk about this.” In recent months, Russian authorities have said harsh restrictions are not needed and stressed the importance of hygiene. Russia has also developed vaccines, though they have not been universally recognized as effective. — Reuters Protester killed in Iraq as tensions flare again: Brazilian state suffers days-long blackout: Tunisia will accept deportees from France: — From news services

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Virus spreads in much of the U.S., setting records and straining health care

end of October, we were right around 30 inpatients,” Mielke said. “Yesterday, we had 225. In October, we had one floor dedicated to covid-19 patients. Now, we have multiple floors, wholly dedicated to covid-19 patients.” The hospital, the city’s largest, has moved some patients with other illnesses to El Paso Children’s Hospital to free up beds for covid-19 patients. The city’s convention center has been outfitted to accept patients. The state of Texas has deployed more than 130 nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists and other workers to University Medical Center to help in the crisis, Mielke said. David Wyatt, an intensive-care nurse at University Medical Center who had just finished a 14-hour shift Wednesday, said his hospital is feeling the strain. “The hospitals are just getting overrun,” he said. Lawler’s medical facility in Omaha is “setting records every day,” he said. “We are seeing more and more cases, and our hospitals are filling up rapidly. Welcome to the concept of exponential growth.” Nationally, the mortality rate from covid-19 has declined, in part because doctors have learned to use medications such as the steroid dexamethasone and techniques such as proning — laying patients on their stomachs to ease their ability to breathe. But increases in deaths lag behind rises in the case count by several weeks. Authorities expect that to occur again in November and December, and mortality rates could rise if hospitals are overwhelmed. “If your ventilators are being run by a dermatologist, your outcomes are not going to be good,” Lawler said. Janis M. Orlowski, chief health-care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges, said “in those areas where there’s an explosion, like Utah, like Nebraska, like in the Dakotas, like Colorado, we are seeing what we saw in the South at the end of the spring and the beginning of the summer. . . . The hospitals are overrun. There are no ICU beds.” Health-care workers are taking off work because they are sick, burned out or have child-care problems, she said. “Are we smarter from understanding the disease from six months ago? Yes,” she said. “Do we have our hands around having adequate supplies? No.” Michael Fraser, chief executive of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents state health departments, said the election has also played a role in the public health response. “There’s been this sense of people giving up,” he said. “You

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Away from U.S. election fever, coronavirus rages on

rate in Europe after Belgium, asked the World Health Organization to send an emergency medical team to the country because thousands of Czech medical professionals have been infected with the virus. Though death rates are not as high as they were in the first wave of the virus, they are slowly climbing around the world. According to a tally by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Latin America now accounts for 1 out of 3 coronavirus-related deaths. The picture is all the more alarming in the United States. “With nearly 9.5 million coronavirus cases reported, the United States is adding new infections at an unprecedented rate,” my colleagues reported. “The seven-day average for new cases hit record highs in 20 states spanning every region of the country Wednesday, with the largest increases in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota and Iowa.” Trump’s record in managing the crisis has not helped. In public and private, he has feuded with many of the administration’s senior public health officials, blaming their warnings and assessments for stoking panic and hurting the American economy. An internal report put forward at the beginning of the week by Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, seemed to fault the administration for not adequately preparing for what could be a dark winter. “We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic … leading to increasing mortality,” said Birx’s report, which my colleagues reported on first. “This is not about lockdowns — it hasn’t been about lockdowns since March or April. It’s about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented.” Birx contradicted Trump on many fronts “Even if Biden wins, we still have several months of the Trump administration in which the epidemic is at its worst,” Carlos del Rio, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University, told the New York Times. “Trump is not in charge. He’s given up, he has basically implied, ‘I don’t care about this’ and he has turned it over to the governors.” The Biden camp has already assembled a coronavirus task force of leading public health experts, who will attempt to map out strategies for, among other things, an efficient, widespread delivery of vaccines and better coordination between federal agencies and the states, should there be a change in power. But their efforts may get stymied in the current smoldering political environment. “The transition team has also discussed contingency

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Ethiopia’s military carries out airstrikes in Tigray as Abiy moves to impose federal control over region

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Friday announced that the military carried out a round of airstrikes against regional security forces in the northern Tigray region, saying the operation destroyed rockets and other heavy artillery. His declaration on state television came the same day he moved to impose full federal control over Tigray and strip its ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front of power, while also disarming its large paramilitary force and local militia. The government “has been forced to take rule of law enforcement measures to effectively respond to the unceasing belligerence perpetrated by the TPLF clique in violation” of the constitution, Abiy said in a statement that launched a six-month state of emergency approved earlier this week. Abiy said a state of emergency task force, led by the chief of staff of the armed forces, had been established with the authority to disarm security forces in Tigray, impose a curfew and restrictions on movement, and detain ­anyone suspected of taking part in illegal activities “that endanger the constitutional order.” The development further ­escalated hostilities, including clashes in parts of Tigray in recent days between the federal government and the TPLF, which ruled the country as part of a coalition until 2018, when Abiy took power. Fighting between the sides erupted Wednesday after Abiy accused the region’s rulers of attacking government military bases and attempting to steal artillery and military equipment. The conflict drew an urgent international response as concerns mounted over its impact on the Horn of Africa if fighting spread beyond Ethiopia’s borders. Sudan on Friday closed its border with Ethiopia. Despite attempts by the United Nations and African Union to mediate in the conflict, there was little evidence that Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was willing to step back from a full-scale confrontation and launch talks with the TPLF. On Thursday, Birhanu Jula, deputy chief of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, said more government troops were being moved into the area, and he declared that Ethiopia had entered an “unexpected war” in Tigray. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres expressed alarm Friday at the growing conflict and joined others in calling for a de-escalation in tensions. “The stability of Ethiopia is important for the entire Horn of Africa region,” Guterres said Friday on Twitter. “I call for an immediate de-escalation of tensions and a peaceful resolution to the dispute.” An international humanitarian official,

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Transcript: “Virus Hunters” A Conversation with Christopher Golden, PhD and Kendra Phelps, PhD

MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. Today, it's my pleasure to welcome two experts who are on the front lines of infectious disease research, Dr. Chris Golden, who is an epidemiologist and ecologist; And Dr. Kendra Phelps, who is a field researcher. The two of them are among the stars of a National Geographic special called "Virus Hunters," which will premier this Sunday at 9:00. I've had a chance to watch an early cut, and I'll tell you, this is one of the scariest but also one of the most inspiring pieces of television journalism that I've seen about the pandemic and the issues that we all need to think about. I should mention that the special that will be on television Sunday is part--linked to November issue of National Geographic, which is all about the COVID-19 pandemic and what it's meant in America and around the world. Again, the articles are powerful, carefully researched, and quite moving. So, you'll want to look at that, as well. I want to start with Dr. Golden and ask you to tell us a little bit about the kind of research you do as a virus hunter. We see you in the field in some situations that, as I mentioned, are sometimes terrifying. But tell us what the purpose of this research is. You say you're looking for next pandemic, the next COVID-19 or Ebola. How do you do that? DR. GOLDEN: That was absolutely the focus of this documentary, was to really highlight the frontline researchers like Kendra, like Jim Desmond, and others who are really at the frontlines, trying to characterize novel pathogens, viruses, bacteria, that are found within wildlife populations and could potentially spill over into human populations. My own research is kind of not immediately on infectious disease itself, but really trying to understand the human health impacts of environmental change, and really trying to characterize the environmental, social, and cultural factors that drive people to kind of interface more and more with wild habitats or with domesticated animals and present a danger for disease emergence. MR. IGNATIUS: So, describe for our viewers what they'll see in the documentary Sunday night. You get into vehicles in the field and you go places where you're going to encounter viruses in the process of transmission and spread that could end up threatening

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Transcript: “Virus Hunters” A Conversation with Christopher Golden, PhD and Kendra Phelps, PhD

has happened in the past, how did people respond to pandemics historically, and what are the ways that we could actually use monitoring, surveillance, and tracking of wildlife diseases to help prevent the next pandemic. And then, we head to Turkey and look at Kendra's work, and it's a very similar situation where we are looking at characterizing these novel viruses and pathogens within a bat population. MR. IGNATIUS: So, Dr. Phelps, tell us a little bit about what we see in the documentary. You're in Turkey looking for the origins of MERS, the Middle East Syndrome virus, or some future version of it, and we see you with something I've never heard of before called a harp trap. Tell us what a harp trap is and a little bit about your research with bats. DR. PHELPS: Well, I think the documentary, as Dr. Golden mentioned, really highlights the--what I like to call boots-on-the-ground surveillance. So, what does it take to get out in the field and, when you're working with bats, that means working at night, getting bit by mosquitoes, not being able to see much more than, you know, a few feet in front of you, just based on what your headlamp can reach. So, working with bats and these proactive disease monitoring programs has been really interesting and definitely something--even though I've worked on bats for almost 20 years, it's kind of a new area of research that I have been expanding into over for the last three years. Now, we typically use harp traps to catch bats. And harp traps, the name comes from the fact that there are four banks or four rows of basically fishing line. So, it's very thin, fine line that's clear. And the bats don't see it when they first emerge from--in Turkey, we were at a cave. So, there--you know, they're not expecting us to be there. So, they're going about their typical flight pattern and they don't see the nearly invisible fishing lines of the harp trap. So, they run into them and slide slowly down the strings into a catchment bag at the bottom and we retrieve them from that bag, which you'll see in the episode. MR. IGNATIUS: And Dr. Phelps, what is it about bats that makes them such extraordinary carriers of these viruses that leap species? We learn in the documentary about the origins of

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Transcript: “Virus Hunters” A Conversation with Christopher Golden, PhD and Kendra Phelps, PhD

squashing any future pandemics is thinking about how we interact with the environment, how our purchases and our decisions on where we donate money. Donate money to habitat conservation or restoration. If we can protect wild areas and keep animals, wildlife, from being in contact with humans, that's the best idea. So, I guess it really comes back to, you know, having a broad knowledge of where you're buying your products, what impact that could potentially have on the environment, and try to minimize that impact as much as possible. And obviously, don't consume wildlife species, would be my last suggestion. And one thing I wanted to add, you know, Virus Hunters does talk about wildlife or game hunting here in the United States, but here in New York City, where I live, there are 80 live animal markets that not only sell domesticated species, but they're also selling some exotic species, and this is legal under the New York State law. So, it isn't just tropical areas; it can be here, right in New York City, where you could be exposed to a unique pathogen from a wild animal that was transported all the way from another continent. So, it--you know, thinking about those types of purchases. Don't support that--types of businesses. MR. IGNATIUS: And Dr. Golden, one other practical issue that I'm sure viewers will think about, there's a memorable scene at a hog facility in the United States where you're, among other things, taking nose swabs of little pigs that are, I assume, on their way eventually to market, to see if they may have some viral disease. We remember swine flu emerged from pigs. And the implication of that scene is that industrialized agriculture, that growing food plentifully, cheaply, with animals packed together in cages or other conditions may unintentionally be a disease generator. Could you just talk briefly about that problem? DR. GOLDEN: Sure. I think that this kind of ties back to when Kendra was talking about viral shedding. The entire idea of viral shedding is that animals that are stressed are more likely to replicate and propagate viruses within their own bodies, and then that increases the risk of spillover. So, whether this is forest fires, deforestation, and mining leading to stress in wildlife; or it is the conditions by which factory farming and industrial agriculture house animals and lead to stress that

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Transcript: “Virus Hunters” A Conversation with Christopher Golden, PhD and Kendra Phelps, PhD

the ways in which we can respond to pandemics if and when they should occur. And so, something like voting next week is also a really important action to take into consideration if you really want to care about stopping the next pandemic. MR. IGNATIUS: All right. So, we have just a minute left, and I want to take a question from our audience that's specific to COVID-19. This is from Linda Leong from Colorado, and she asks--I'll put this to Dr. Phelps, "What happens if COVID-19 mutates? Does this mean it could be a threat for years to come?" Dr. Phelps. DR. PHELPS: Well, that's a really good question. And I'm not a human epidemiologist, so I am not studying COVID-19 pathogenicity and how viral strains may be mutating. It is a possibility, but in my personal opinion, I'll put it that way, I don't feel like there's going to be significant mutations in the sense that we will have to start from ground zero to figure out how to develop therapeutics or vaccines. So, it may be something similar to the flu vaccinee that we get annually--and I encourage everybody to get that vaccine this year--that when we do have a COVID-19 vaccine, that it may be something that we have to--we're still learning a lot about the vaccine. It hasn't even been made available to the public, but it could potentially be where our antibodies from the vaccination wane over time enough that we need to get annual vaccinations, but there could be significant shifts in the strain of COVID-19 that we have to slightly make modifications each year for the vaccine to be most effective. But I don't believe that there are going to be significant mutations that lead to a whole different virus and a whole different pandemic. MR. IGNATIUS: So, I feel we could continue this conversation for a while longer, but I'm going to direct viewers to their television sets Sunday night at 9:00 Eastern when they can watch this fascinating documentary, "Virus Hunters." I want to thank Dr. Golden and Dr. Phelps for being our guests today on Washington Post Live. Thank you, both. DR. GOLDEN: Thank you so much, David. DR. PHELPS: Thank you. MR. IGNATIUS: So, thank you for joining us. We'll be back with Washington Post Live next week. Gosh, there's an event coming up next week that we're

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NBA, players reach deal to open season Dec. 22, play 72-game schedule

By comparison, 132 days passed between the final game of the 2019 Finals and the start of last season. The NBA is attempting to make up for lost time after the coronavirus prompted a four-month shutdown March 11. Initially, the two sides floated the possibility of a January or February start to the season, but the NBA reversed its position once it became clear that the ongoing spread of the virus would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to host large amounts of fans in arenas this season. The United States saw a record 116,707 new coronavirus cases Thursday, and Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said recently that sporting events might not see a return to normal until the fourth quarter of 2021. The Athletic reported Thursday that the NBA might seek to open a portion of luxury suites at limited capacity this season. The players’ union initially was reluctant to move so quickly through the offseason and preferred starting on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in large part because of the physical and mental toll of the bubble. But delaying the start until January could have cost the NBA as much as $1 billion, ESPN.com reported, and the players had little tolerance for further hits to their wallets as the clock ticked on their decision. With an estimated $4 billion gameday-related revenue drop coming this season because of the coronavirus, the sides ultimately concluded they needed to maximize their television visibility by playing showcase games on Christmas Day and returning the postseason closer to its standard calendar. The NBA’s postseason television ratings, which were held in August, September and October this year, sagged with competition from the NFL, MLB and college football. Some teams will find themselves more rushed than others. The Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat will be hardest hit; they will be asked to report to training camp just seven weeks after concluding the Finals in October. Lakers star LeBron James joked last week on HBO that he would be ramping up slowly. “I’m cherry-picking the whole first half of the season,” James said. But eight teams that weren’t invited to the bubble haven’t played since March. Six more, including the Washington Wizards, have been off since mid-August. All told, 22 of 30 teams haven’t played since at least the first week of September. “Additional details

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Scattered and silenced by the pandemic, choral groups are trying to find their voice

In March, Eugene Rogers was in Ann Arbor, Mich., celebrating his appointment as the new artistic director of the Washington Chorus by completely scrapping and reimagining his inaugural season for a virtual future. Meanwhile, in Washington, Steven Fox, music director of the Cathedral Chorus Society, was reeling from the forced cancellation of a program two years in the making — a celebration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment featuring the premiere of a CCS commission from composer Lisa Bielawa. And in New York, Bielawa was trying to figure out what to do with herself after losing access to her primary instrument — other people. Every corner of the classical music world has been hit hard by the pandemic, but perhaps no subset seems as uniquely centered in the coronavirus’s crosshairs as choral music, which relies upon — and, indeed, exists as — a combination of public safety no-no’s: large groups, proximity and voices raised to the heavens (i.e., major distribution of droplets). Look closely at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report covering one of the first termed “superspreader” events — an outbreak in early March among the 122 members of a choir in Skagit County, Wash., that sickened 53 and killed two — and you’ll see singers recast in an ugly new pandemic-era nomenclature: superemitters. For choruses and choristers — a great many of whom volunteer for their positions on the risers — the music may be the meeting place, but the act of singing is what generates the sense of community and connection that keeps them returning to rehearsals — as a small percentage of the Choral Arts Society of Frederick recently did. More studies than any of us have time for here demonstrate the function of music as a social binding agent (and in the case of one study, “a special form of social cognition”) as well as a source of physical well-being (aiding everything from posture to breathing) and chemical pleasure (helloooo, dopamine). This goes for those listening, too. Put another way, that sense of belonging you get while standing before a chorus of hundreds singing at the holidays isn’t just you feeling festive — it’s your body behaving like a body. If talking to a loved one over Zoom doesn’t feel quite the same as sharing a sofa or a coffee in person, it’s partly because — get ready for some science —

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The ways our modern tech stack up to sci-fi and fantasy marvels

reserve a wearable turbine T-73 from Jetpack International for a very reasonable $200,000. As for a more functional model: as well as the commercial parameters — safety, portability, fuel efficiency — there’s also the small matter of the piloting skills of the buyer. Factor in problems arising from flight path interference, and investors may feel they’re looking at another Ford Edsel. “By the turn of the millenium [sic] a technology known as VIRTUAL REALITY will be in widespread use. It will allow you to enter computer generated artificial worlds as unlimited as the imagination itself.” So begins sci-fi movie “The Lawnmower Man” (1992), whose intro was at least taken seriously by TV commissioning editors: the following year would see a short-lived British game show, “Cyberzone,” where contestants lumbered around a digital metropolis, while one episode of 1995’s “The Outer Limits” imagined virtual reality headsets so immersive they gave their wearers clairvoyance. Nearly 30 years later, it seems technology is catching up with its 1990s prophecies: the Oculus Quest gaming headset had sold 400,000 units by the close of last year. But according to international research, widespread VR still has an ethical barrier to overcome. It seems few have considered the negative effects of prolonged recreation in a digital playground, such as false memory brought about by identity hacking (where VR realizations of groups or individuals can be deliberately manipulated), and the decompression effect of reentering normality. Maybe, as with the many attempts to revive 3-D television, people aren’t yet ready for widespread total immersion. Moving objects instantaneously has been an enduring fantasy for over a century. From the vanishing cat of Edward Page Mitchell’s 1877 story “The Man Without a Body” to the 1956 novel “The Stars My Destination” and its citizens capable of “jaunting” using willpower, humans have longed to be zapped from A to B. The good news is the phenomenon exists — provided we’re not the passengers. Quantum teleportation involves “entangling” separate, unconnected particles until their statuses match. Qubits of information can be sent between quantum computers, and recently enabled a “jamming session” where Alexis Kirke, a PhD holder in arts and mathematics at the University of Plymouth, used an Australian IBM quantum computer to “accompany” him as he played the “Games of Thrones” theme. Not as exhilarating as interdimensional transport, perhaps, but the manufacturer that perfects a home computer capable of quantum teleportation will be a

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The ways our modern tech stack up to sci-fi and fantasy marvels

the absence of a human bedside manner. If we can’t create an evil master control program, can we at least create the mannequin version? It’s nearly 50 years since Michael Crichton directed “Westworld,” adapted from his novel about a dust-bowl theme park whose chief robot cowpoke turns rogue and begins dueling for real. Androids that convincing might not yet walk among us, but they certainly exist, albeit in a more benevolent form. At the Kodaiji Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, enlightenment seekers can enjoy sermons preached by Mindar, a robot speaking as Kannon Bodhisattva, the Buddhist deity of mercy. As one observing priest remarked: “It will just keep updating itself and evolving. That’s the beauty of a robot. It can store knowledge forever, and limitlessly.” The only thing stealthier than a machine priest could be something you can’t see at all. Artificial invisibility has been dreamed of for decades, perhaps most fondly imagined in the 2005-set video game “Metal Gear Solid” (1998), which allowed players to use stealth camo to evade enemies. We may already be on the cusp of such technology. European scientists have recently discovered that a key part of quantum computers — photonic circuits — can turn invisible when red femto­second laser pulses are shone through them. Not quite the magic cloak Harry Potter fans long for, but proof that high-tech invisibility has moved beyond the “Ghost camouflage” that was recently able to evade night-vision. When imagining 2015, the screenwriters for “Back to the Future, Part II” got some lucky picks: gargantuan TVs, thumbprint transactions and a lasting obsession with the 1980s (as well as Michael Jackson’s performing hologram). But the levitating hoverboards, whispered to be real at the time of the film’s production, are still just a pipe dream. That didn’t stop French inventor Franky Zapata attempting to cross the English Channel on a hoverboard last year. It might not have been the model as flown by Michael J. Fox in the movie — that appeared to use a form of flux pinning (as opposed to a flux capacitor), while Zapata’s device was jet-based, and ran off a kerosene-filled backpack — but it allowed its pilot to float from Calais to Dover in 22 minutes. Whether the board will become commercially viable is open to speculation; die-hards who still want the Mattel version from the movie will have to contend with a desktop replica on Amazon.

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For nearly 200 dogs, a journey from a South Korean meat farm to a shelter in Maryland

2017. Tori turned up at a protest of the dog meat trade in Seoul in 2018, apparently dropped off there by Moon’s daughter. As a presidential candidate, Moon had promised to phase out the dog meat trade but has been silent on the issue since taking power, despite a petition signed by 200,000 people. His government now says it needs to consider the livelihoods of people engaged in the business and expects “the system to change gradually in line with social discussions.” Even North Korean leader Kim Jong Un got in with the dog-friendly mood, giving Moon two Korean hunting dogs in 2018 who gave birth to six “peace puppies” the following year. Many dog farmers also sell animals into the underground dog fighting business, and some of the animals rescued last week were aggressive and understandably distrustful of humans. But Flocken said the vast majority will be ready to find their “forever homes” after some weeks of behavioral training. The few who are too terrified and anxious to live with people will be sent to a specialist shelter, where they will receive “incredible care.” Last year, Flocken adopted a 5-year-old golden retriever from a dog-meat farm. It has taken months for Chewbacca to become less anxious, Flocken says, and “he’s still a little rough around the edges — but he’s part of our family now.” Some dogs from the latest rescue mission in South Korea are already getting used to a domestic routine. Patten, 62, who is taking care of the Chihuahua, Cassie, said the dog has spent most of her time in a crate in Patten’s room since arriving Oct. 23. Initially, Cassie wouldn’t come out at all when Patten was around. Now she’ll inch out for a pet when Patten sits by the crate, only to quickly retreat back inside. “I’m just going with my instincts,” she said. “I’m not pushing her. It’s a lot of Google reading.” Anna Frostic, senior vice president of programs and policy at the Humane Society, has taken a 4-month-old puppy, a yellow lab mix with white spots on her toes and chest, into her Virginia home in Alexandria’s Old Town. “It’s pretty remarkable that she’s been able to adopt so quickly as a pet,” said Frostic. So far, the pup mainly sleeps and “continues to roll over from one cute position to another,” Frostic said. When out for a walk, “she

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The results of our national election may tell a story of division. Ballot measures tell a different tale.

This column has been updated. The results of our national election may tell a story of division, but state ballot propositions tell a different tale. They show Americans agreeing about significant priorities, including a fundamental remaking of our justice system. There is much to be grateful for here, and something to build on. The American people — step by step, in red states and blue — are ending the war on drugs. With strong majorities, ballot measures in four states — Arizona (59.8 percent of the vote at the time of this writing), Montana (56.6 percent), New Jersey (66.9 percent) and South Dakota (54.2 percent) — legalized recreational marijuana. This brings to 15 the number of states that have done so. In Mississippi, a supermajority of 74 percent legalized medical marijuana. Oregon, which legalized marijuana in 1973, passed a measure (58.8 percent) to decriminalize even so-called hard drugs, following a successful example in Portugal. Possession of small amounts of drugs including heroin and cocaine will still be illegal but as a civil violation, carrying a small fine, not a criminal violation bringing prison time. Funds saved from changed enforcement practice will support addiction recovery centers. ​Among other things, these measures will reduce prison populations. In another blow against the injustices of mass incarceration, ​59.1 percent of California voters supported Proposition 17 to restore the vote to parolees. In this they joined Florida’s voters, who in 2018 (with a near-supermajority of 65 percent) amended their state constitution to automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons who have completed their sentences, except for those convicted of murder or sexual offenses. The people of Mississippi successfully replaced a state flag that had included emblems of the Confederacy with a new one decorated with a magnolia, stars and the phrase “In God We Trust.” ​In Rhode Island, citizens removed the words “Providence Plantations” from the official state name. We do have the capacity to grapple with our past of racial domination and develop new narratives for who we are and what we want to be. Why do our national electoral politics look so different? The problem is not with the American people or our choices per se but with the rules we use for organizing our elections. In general, we use a plurality system, sometimes confusingly referred to as “first past the post”: Whichever candidate has the most votes wins the election. When there

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Asha Gomez made her name as an Indian American chef. But she’s tired of being pigeonholed.

south of France.” In her first book, “My Two Souths,” released in 2016, Gomez embraced the boundaries of the southern Indian state of Kerala and the American South to understand the culinary connections between two places she calls home. (But don’t call it fusion — “I think it’s the other F word,” she says). In that book, she writes of growing up in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, surrounded by extended family in a community fondly called Carmel Compound, after her maternal grandmother. There, she watched her mother and three aunts in the kitchen. “Under the tutelage of these loving women, I absorbed lessons in preparing traditional, coastal Keralan fare,” Gomez wrote. At 15, she moved to the United States, first to New York and later to Atlanta. “The fact that my last name is Gomez from Portuguese influences, that I grew up with no taboos against eating meat and that I’m from a Christian community that can trace its history all the way back to St. Thomas the Apostle, speaks to an intersectionality and diversity in my background that many in the U.S. were not familiar with,” she said in an email. In Atlanta, she ran an ayurvedic spa, where she served her Keralan home cooking to clients after their appointments. In 2012, she opened her own restaurant, the acclaimed Cardamom Hill, a precursor to the style of cooking she would later write about in “My Two Souths.” Two-and-a-half years later, she closed its doors, and now she focuses her attention on her kitchen studio, The Third Space, for culinary pop-ups and custom dinners. Gomez is among many chefs of color who have pursued a greater understanding of their family’s food in a culinary journey. But when recognition of expertise assumes an inextricable bind to ethnic identity, food can stifle more than it can free. When chef and writer Jenny Dorsey was in culinary school, she requested a fine-dining restaurant such as Per Se or Jean-Georges for her externship. Her adviser, however, returned with several names but only one in fine dining — Annisa, the now-shuttered Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan owned by Chinese American chef Anita Lo. “Annisa is a lovely restaurant. I would have been happy to work there. But it was literally the only fine-dining restaurant that they came back with as an option,” Dorsey said. “I’m Chinese American, and I happen to want to work in fine dining. But

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The Health 202: Biden is expected to unwind dozens of Trump-era health-care changes

in 2018. Congress could potentially make the whole lawsuit irrelevant by passing a law increasing the penalty to $1, although with control of the Senate still up in the air, it's unclear whether it would do so. In the middle of a pandemic, the stakes are high. If the law is overturned, it could cast into doubt insurance for people with preexisting conditions. This could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of Americans who have contracted the coronavirus if covid-19, which sometimes causes lingering effects, is classified as a preexisting condition. The Supreme Court has been hearing oral arguments over teleconference during the coronavirus pandemic and broadcasting them live for the first time. Tomorrow's arguments will be aired on C-SPAN. An administration official said that the White House chief of staff and at least five other aides have received positive coronavirus test results in the period around Election Day, Anne Gearan and Josh Dawsey report. “Meadows, who tested positive Wednesday, at first told others not to disclose his condition. But after his diagnosis became public late Friday, the official confirmed that a broader outbreak threatens to create a new crisis in the West Wing just as Meadows and other top aides are trying to help President Trump navigate a bitter loss at the polls to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden,” Anne and Josh write. The latest outbreak is at least the third wave of infections to strike the White House. The first, which erupted in the days after a Sept. 26 Rose Garden ceremony honoring Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, resulted in Trump testing positive and entering the hospital with covid-19. Two weeks later, at least five aides or advisers to Vice President Pence tested positive. But despite repeated infections, the White House has continued to ignore public health guidelines around the use of masks or social distancing. “Meadows, for instance, has rarely worn a mask in public, has ridiculed Democratic governors for locking down bars, restaurants and other businesses and has fought with federal science advisers about the administration’s response to the pandemic,” Anne and Josh write. The White House has also faced criticism for failing to conduct contact tracing or genetic analysis that could determine the source and spread of the outbreaks. This pattern may be playing out again. The administration official told The Post that many White House staffers and Cabinet officers who had close contact with Meadows

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McDonald’s to roll out ‘McPlant,’ a meat alternatives line

RESTAURANTS Fast-food giant McDonald’s on Monday decided to debut its own plant-based meat alternatives line called “McPlant” in 2021, including a patty that Beyond Meat subsequently said it helped co-create. “Beyond Meat and McDonald’s co-created the plant-based patty which will be available as part of their McPlant platform,” a Beyond Meat representative said in an email. Beyond Meat was the front-runner for a contract as it had conducted tests of a “P.L.T.” burger at nearly 100 McDonald’s locations in Canada this year. McDonald’s reported market-beating profits and revenue for the third quarter on Monday. “Plant-based products are an ongoing consumer trend. It’s not a matter of if McDonald’s will get into plant-based, it’s a matter of when,” McDonald’s chief executive Chris Kempczinski said on a call with analysts. Analysts, rival fast-food companies and plant-based protein producers have been closely watching McDonald’s, as it is one of the few national chains without a plant-based burger on the menu. While other chains have started offering plant-based meat options, including Restaurant Brands International’s Burger King, White Castle and Dunkin’ Brands Group, a McDonald’s contract could be the biggest and would put the plant-based meat movement front and center in the United States. McDonald’s said that under its McPlant line, it could offer products including burgers, chicken substitutes and breakfast sandwiches, which it expects to test in some markets in 2021. — Reuters CYBERSECURITY Zoom Video Communications must implement a new information security program as part of its proposed settlement with U.S. regulators over user privacy issues, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday. The resolution did not have a financial component, but the agency said Zoom would face fines of up to $43,280 for each future violation under the agreement. It said Zoom’s misleading claims about giving users a secure channel of communication while offering a lower level of protection gave people a false sense of security. “Zoom’s security practices didn’t line up with its promises,” said Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. A company spokeswoman said the security of its users is a top priority for Zoom. “We have already addressed the issues identified by the FTC,” she said. The FTC voted 3 to 2 along party lines to approve the settlement. Democratic commissioner Rohit Chopra issued a dissenting statement saying the company’s failures warrant serious action. Zoom has been a big beneficiary of the coronavirus shutdowns, with millions

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The Technology 202: Trump's refusal to concede presents a new test for social networks

the United States launches its own antitrust case against the company, Jeanne Whalen reports. The European Union successfully fined the search giant $10 billion for antitrust violations, but critics say the court's decision to allow Google to decide its own remedies failed to make serious change. “The bad actor gets to decide what their medicine is going to be. And that’s just crazy, right?” Megan Gray, general counsel of rival search engine DuckDuckGo, said in an interview. The fixes Google did adopt changed little, Gray said. Google spokesman Jose Castaneda disputed the idea that the European Commission investigations have changed nothing, saying that the changes were “generating billions of clicks for more than 600 comparison shopping services.” Google is appealing the E.U. rulings. The United States could be more willing to force Google to sell off parts of its business. “It’s more difficult to win a case in the U.S. than in Europe. However, the U.S. in the past has applied more far-reaching remedies, mandating divestitures and breakups,” said Gene Kimmelman, former chief counsel for the Justice Department’s antitrust division, who now serves as senior adviser to the nonprofit tech policy group Public Knowledge. The Justice Department may also be more willing to break up an American company than European regulators, experts say. “In a way the best thing that could happen in the E.U. would be for the U.S. action to succeed,” said Damien Geradin, a lawyer in Brussels who regularly represents companies opposing Google in antitrust matters. The regulation will require companies to get a government license to sell facial recognition and cyber-surveillance technologies with military capabilities, Patrick Howell O'Neill at MIT Technology Review reports. The change comes in response to growing concerns about the use of the technologies by authoritarian governments in other parts of the world. Enforcement will be up to individual European Union members and guidance to consider the risk of human rights violations in licensing is nonbinding. The action still needs to be finalized by the International Trade Committee and European Parliament. VR Furries Are Now Running Around The Four Seasons Total Landscaping (BuzzFeed) Twitter argued over a map of Thanksgiving food preferences by state…the Internet is healing. Isn't everything just a vehicle for gravy anyway? (Don't @ me) The right take: In other news…one Biden tech supporter we missed yesterday. Is the Reddit co-founder gunning for a potential role on the transition team?

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With diplomatic challenges mounting, Palestinians just lost their lead negotiator to covid-19

JERUSALEM — The death Tuesday of longtime negotiator Saeb Erekat deprives the Palestinian leadership of one of its most seasoned operators just as it confronts diplomatic upheavals across the region, a transition to a new presidential administration in Washington and Arab allies who are suddenly willing to engage with Israel on their own. Leaders from around the world noted the passing of Erekat, who died of complications from covid-19. A figure who loomed large in the region’s diplomatic affairs for decades, he was well known to the Middle East experts likely to staff the State Department under Joe Biden’s presidency. An academic who spoke fluent English and advocated nonviolent change, Erekat earned a reputation as a negotiator who had read everything and came prepared. “If there had been no Saeb Erekat, you would have had to invent one” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator who knew Erekat over more than 40 years. “And if there are ever again going to be serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, they are going to have to find another one.” Erekat, 65, had a history of respiratory trouble and received a lung transplant in the United States three years ago. After he fell ill with covid-19 in October, his daughter, a physician, treated him at his West Bank home in Jericho until he was transferred in critical condition to an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem. His presence there for three weeks sparked small protests by Israelis who held Erekat responsible for Palestinian terrorist attacks. Some Israeli politicians said the government should have insisted on concessions from the Palestinian Authority before allowing him to receive treatment. But until contracting covid-19 in October, Erekat remained active in the inner circle of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Dr. Erekat devoted his life to defending and fighting for the achievement of our right to freedom, self-determination, national independence, and the return of Palestine’s refugees,” the Palestinian Authority said in a statement. “His memory will remain eternal, enlightening his people's conscience until the fulfillment of what he fought with them to achieve: the end of Israel's brutal occupation and the realization of Palestine’s independence with Jerusalem as its capital.” Erekat was remembered with respect, even by many Israelis. Nitzan Horowitz, leader of the left-wing Meretz party and an advocate for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, said that “despite his frustration with the situation, he never abandoned his adherence

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Man arrested and charged in September slaying in Columbia Heights

A Northwest D.C. man has been arrested and charged in a September homicide in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, police said Tuesday. D.C. police said John Pollard, 33, of Northwest, was fatally shot on Sept. 30 in the 3200 block of Hiatt Place NW just off 16th Street in Columbia Heights. Authorities on Monday arrested Randle Price, 28, of Northwest Washington. He is charged with first degree murder while armed — felony murder, according to officials. The case remains under investigation.

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Saeb Erekat, Palestinian negotiator who shaped Arab-Israeli peace agreements, dies at 65

Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian negotiator who helped craft some of the most sweeping bids for Arab-Israeli peace but was left dismayed by both Israeli resistance to key concessions on land and Palestinian infighting that eroded his people’s unity, died Nov. 10 at a hospital in Jerusalem. He was 65. The cause was complications from covid-19, according to his office and family. He had a heart attack in 2012, and five years later, he received a lung transplant in Virginia to treat pulmonary fibrosis. He announced early in October that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and was rushed to the Israeli hospital from his home in Jericho on Oct. 18. He was placed on a ventilator the next day. Dr. Erekat, who honed his fluent and idiomatic English during studies in San Francisco and Britain, was for decades a principal international voice of the Palestinian cause. Even as peace efforts faltered in the late 1990s, he remained a fervent backer of the “two-state solution” in which a Palestinian nation would exist side by side with Israel. Yet Dr. Erekat also shared the deepening Palestinian frustration as aspirations of statehood appeared to slip further away after a flurry of optimism generated by the landmark Oslo accords of the 1990s. The agreements — hammered out by representatives including Dr. Erekat, when he was a protege of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat — expanded Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Additional gains fell apart amid the second of two Palestinian uprisings against Israel, known as intifadas, and the construction of Israel’s “separation barrier” with the West Bank. When asked in 2015 if the optimism of Oslo was lost, he told the BBC: “It aches my heart to say yes.” The Palestinians, while blaming Israeli leaders, were also weakened by a family feud. The main Fatah party was left in control of the West Bank while the militant group Hamas held the Gaza Strip, which came under an Israeli blockade and retaliatory attacks. Dr. Erekat temporarily resigned his negotiator post in 2003 after being left off a team led by future Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who was engaged in a power struggle with Arafat (who died in 2004). Dr. Erekat stepped down again in early 2011 after the leak of the “Palestine Papers,” which detailed years of confidential exchanges in the peace process and in which Dr. Erekat

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Tourists are buying fake covid-19 test results on the black market to travel

With global coronavirus cases rising, many countries are now requiring negative coronavirus test results for entry, but getting a test in time can be difficult for travelers. So it may have been only a matter of time before a black-market option emerged: counterfeit test results. The practice of forging or purchasing fake results has surfaced in destinations around the world, with instances of manipulated negatives in Brazil, France and the United Kingdom. Last week, French officials broke up an alleged forgery ring that was selling false test certificates at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport. According to the Associated Press, the group was asking $180 to $360 (150 to 300 euros) for the digital certificates of a negative result. Police charged the group of seven (six men and one woman) with forgery and fraud after investigating how an Ethiopia-bound passenger acquired a false coronavirus document at the airport in September. The fake certificates were stored on mobile phones and had the name of a medical lab located in Paris, the BBC reported. Police in Brazil recently arrested four domestic travelers who forged negative coronavirus tests to visit the island of Fernando de Noronha on a private jet, according to the Associated Press. The island, which is known as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, reopened to tourists on Oct. 10 and requires entrants to present negative coronavirus test results acquired no more than one day in advance. According to a U.K. newspaper, the practice has also surfaced in England: The Lancashire Telegraph reported speaking with one man who doctored a friend’s negative coronavirus test, printed it out and used it for international travel. The newspaper also spoke to another traveler who was offered a fake document from their travel agent. As test-result protocols for travel are becoming more high-tech, however, it’s unlikely that many travelers would be able to travel with a manipulated document. The state of Hawaii, for example, requires visitors to preregister in their online testing program, use an approved testing partner, and upload results to a digital portal. Paper copies are not accepted. A new app called CommonPass launched last month for passengers on United Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways to upload their coronavirus test results directly to their airline for verification when flying through some airports. The health-screening app aims to decrease global reliance on quarantines by centralizing a traveler’s coronavirus status and documents

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Coronavirus spread hits record levels in Maryland, Virginia amid national spike

our state has been preparing for this fall surge for the past eight months, we cannot afford to let our guard down,” Hogan tweeted Monday. “Wear a mask, wash your hands, and watch your distance.” The rate of new infections in the D.C. region continues to hover at about half the U.S. average, even while the number of new cases marches upward along with states across the country. The national seven-day average of new infections per 100,000 residents stood Monday at 33. That number was 14 in D.C., 17 in Virginia and 20 in Maryland. By comparison, North Dakota — the state with the highest rate of infection — is recording 176 new cases per 100,000 residents, more than 12 times the rate in the nation’s capital. The recent daily average in D.C. is 93, up from 36 at the start of October but still about half the record level set during the early days of the pandemic. The city has been recording a lower rate of new infections than its neighboring states. John D. Voss, vice chairman for quality and safety at the University of Virginia Health System, attributed part of the regional increase to fatigue with following protocols known to keep the virus from spreading. He said the local rise in cases is one piece of an increase nationally. “There’s growth in every area of this country,” he said. “All of the same factors are at play.” Voss said infections will probably continue to rise as the weather cools — pushing more activities and social gatherings indoors — and people begin holiday travel. Although pandemic-related developments have been grim in recent days, Monday brought a bright spot as a vaccine developed by drug giant Pfizer and German biotechnology firm BioNTech was found to be more than 90 percent effective. William A. Petri, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said it was a promising development, with the best part “how effective it is.” He said the rate of effectiveness surpassed the expectations of health experts. Petri said he expects first responders, health-care workers, the elderly and others at high risk to have first access to a vaccine. The general population could expect to be vaccinated by late spring or summer, he said. In Virginia, the seven-day average of new cases set another record Monday, two days after the state recorded its highest

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With coronavirus cases spiking nationwide, all signs point to a harrowing autumn

try to get every single patient to a bed that has a nurse and a doctor, and respiratory therapist, and all of the things that they need to care for them,” said Julie Watson, chief medical officer of Integris Health, which operates 18 hospitals across Oklahoma. “So it’s exhausting, to be honest with you. It’s exhausting, because there’s just no break.” Watson said the system has hired hundreds of additional nurses on a contract basis, but resources are still stretched. “The part that is most frustrating for us as physicians is it does not have to be this way,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to choose between surgeries that patients need and caring for patients who get covid because they’re not wearing their mask, or, God forbid, someone who was around someone who wasn’t. That, to me, is unjust.” That same worry persisted in Minnesota, where Amy W. Williams, executive dean of practice at the Department of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, said the number of covid-19 patients in the hospital rose sharply in the past two weeks as the virus spread rapidly in the Upper Midwest. Williams said her top concern was maintaining adequate staff because Mayo personnel were becoming exposed or infected in the community along with other people, forcing them to quarantine and miss work. The startling surge has compelled new efforts in some parts of the country to slow the rampant virus. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) announced Tuesday that by week’s end, bars and restaurants must stop serving at 10 p.m. In addition, he put in place new caps on weddings, funerals and other social gatherings. Iowans also will soon be subject to stricter coronavirus rules, as the state faces a daily case count that has nearly doubled since the first day of the month. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said Tuesday at a news conference that masks will be required at indoor gatherings of more than 25 people and outdoor gatherings of over 100 people. Groups that congregate at restaurants, bars or other gatherings will be limited to eight people, unless they are all from the same household. Each participant in a youth or high school sporting event will be allowed only two spectators, and masks will be required for staff members and customers at personal-services businesses such as hair salons. The new restrictions are notable for Reynolds, who has resisted implementing a statewide mask

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How the lessons of 2020 may make travel better in the long run

The conventional wisdom is that 2020 has nearly destroyed travel. And though it’s true that covid-19 ruined our vacations and took a wrecking ball to a large part of the industry, the conventional wisdom is wrong. “Actually, the pandemic is making travel better in many ways,” says Clayton Reid, CEO of MMGY Global, a marketing company known for its research on consumer trends and travel. “It’s forced travel companies to introduce innovative contactless service. They have new booking procedures and a commitment to cleanliness and safety. I believe these are long-term shifts.” He’s right. Many of the positive changes appear to be here to stay. Among them: ●Contactless service ●New booking policies ●Commitment to cleanliness and safety ●The return of common sense ●Room to breathe ●Safety-first policies ●Focus on the customer ●Environmentally friendly ●Spending more time outdoors ●Politeness is back ●And so are travel agents I second that. When I was stuck in France during the outbreak, I called a travel adviser to get me home. And she did. A year ago, who didn’t want a travel experience without the crowds? Common-sense policies, more civility, a more environmentally friendly industry — those were on everyone’s wish list. Well, now we have these positive changes, and it looks like they’re here to stay. Thanks, 2020.

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Frostburg State University cancels in-person classes, again, as virus surges through western Maryland

that most transmission is coming via social and household gatherings,” said Liz Medcalf, a university spokeswoman. Forty-five students and employees who have contracted the virus are in isolation, she said. Frostburg State made a temporary pivot to online learning on Oct. 29 after the school’s health center recorded a spike in cases. The campus resumed in-person classes about a week later as the caseload continued to fluctuate and concerns over the school’s handling of the virus lingered. Students say some classmates have chosen to leave campus. Sixty cases of the virus were reported on and around campus during the last two weeks of October, data from the university show. The university said last Wednesday that 26 students were in isolation. Classrooms will shutter, but the school’s residence halls will remain open, officials said in an email sent to students. Fewer than 1,150 students moved into the dorms this semester; 400 students are living in a public-private apartment complex on the grounds. Campus dining will provide to-go meals through the end of the semester on Nov. 24, officials said. Health officials in Allegany County reported 89 new cases of the virus Wednesday, pushing the county’s caseload to 1,245. The county’s case rate stood at more than 66 per 100,000 people Tuesday, the highest in Maryland, the health department said on its Facebook page. The region on Wednesday opened a free, drive-through testing clinic at the Allegany County Fairgrounds for children and adults. The clinic will operate three times a week, officials said. “By partnering with the Allegany County Health Department to establish a new testing site, we are able to increase local testing capacity at a time when the need is high,” said Robert R. Neall, Maryland’s health department secretary. “With covid-19 cases and positivity rates ticking up in the region and across the state, it is critical for all Marylanders who need a test to be diligent about getting a test.” Hogan unveiled new statewide restrictions Tuesday, including orders to limit indoor gatherings to 25 people. The governor “strongly advised” Marylanders from traveling outside the state and reduced indoor operations at restaurants from 75 to 50 percent capacity. Shortly after the Frostburg State announcement, the University of Maryland in College Park said it would pause football team activities after eight players tested positive. The school’s Saturday game against Ohio State University has been canceled, officials in the athletics department said.

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How Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change

Climate Mobilization” to coordinate action across the federal government. In a sign of how government institutions outside the usual environmental agencies are beginning to grapple with climate change, the Federal Reserve’s biannual financial stability report released this week warned, “Climate change adds a layer of economic uncertainty and risk that we have only begun to incorporate into our analysis of financial stability.” Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, a leading contender for treasury secretary under a Biden administration, welcomed climate’s inclusion in the report, and Fed Board Chair Jerome H. Powell described it last week as a long-term risk. On Tuesday, the Fed requested to join the Network for Greening the Financial System, a global coalition of central banks and bank supervisors working to manage climate risks. Several former Obama officials noted how the last Democratic administration ended without a complete overhaul of federal policies affecting climate change. Obama made the issue a major focus in his second term, but he did not launch his climate action plan until June 2013, and key departments such as Interior did not finalize their own comprehensive plans before he left office. Christy Goldfuss, who oversaw many of those efforts as managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and who co-chaired the new report, said Biden is now positioned to institute climate-focused policies across the government since he made it a central issue in his campaign. It will be essential for Biden to quickly fill jobs left vacant under President Trump, rebuild departments and return the leadership of agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management back to D.C., she said. “This is it. This is the moment for climate action,” said Goldfuss, now senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. “Climate change impacts every aspect of people’s lives, it impacts every aspect of the economy, and the federal government is connected to every aspect of those as well.” Changing the way the government buys goods and services could have a ripple effect in the private sector because of the purchasing power of federal agencies, Goldfuss said. Groups like the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups, have championed policies like California’s Buy Clean law, which requires the state to consider the pollution emitted by manufacturers of glass, steel and other materials when making purchasing decisions. Feldman declined to comment

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Planning a ski trip during covid-19? Keep these safety tips in mind.

For most slopes in America, November signals the start of ski and snowboard season. Millions of travelers make their way to the mountains every winter dreaming of fresh powder. But, of course, things aren’t so certain this year. Between coronavirus cases climbing, health concerns and travel restrictions, would-be skiers and snowboarders may find it difficult to venture out. David Beuther, a Denver-based pulmonologist at National Jewish Health who plans to take a ski trip this season, says families may have to navigate these issues all winter, even with this week’s hopeful news of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. “Overall, I don’t think there’s going to be a substantial change or relief of the pandemic during the next ski season.” However, there is some good news. “Skiing is such a low-risk activity, and it’s a low transmission activity,” says Darcy Selenke, the medical director of Grand County Public Health and staff physician for Denver Health at the base of Winter Park Resort. “People naturally socially distance when they ski. It’s pretty hard to ski consistently within six feet of anybody.” For those who do decide to plan a ski or snowboarding trip this winter, here are ways to reduce coronavirus-related health risks. Beuther says the safest option is to stay home this winter. However, choosing a ski destination carefully may lower coronavirus risks for those heading out. “This pandemic is going to be up and down in different areas of the country,” he says. “A general ground rule is to always be looking at the rates of disease … locally in that county or that ski resort town, and also where you are.” Keep in mind that the mountain destinations with small year-round populations are particularly vulnerable to outbreaks. “With the last significant increase in cases of covid across the U.S., there’s always a little bit of angst and anxiousness about inviting people from all over the U.S. and potentially the world into your small resort town with sometimes limited resources,” Selenke says. Selenke adds that any traveler with a suspected coronavirus infection should avoid going on a ski trip, not only to avoid spreading the virus to the local community, but also because of the risk of getting more sick being in high altitude. “That’s going to make your underlying infection worse,” she says. Beuther is concerned people may think that because they’re going to a remote destination, they’ll forget about standard

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Planning a ski trip during covid-19? Keep these safety tips in mind.

area. Because we all want to go skiing and … we want to stay open. The sport is supposed to be fun, and we want everyone to be safe and respectful.” For Beuther’s ski trip, his family will stay at a condominium instead of a hotel. A condo can help travelers reduce contact with strangers and allow families to prepare meals themselves. “We’re going to bring our own food, and we’re going to eat in the condo instead of going out to the restaurants,” Beuther says. Selenke recommends others to do the same. “We would encourage people to drive and pick up groceries, to plan on eating at wherever they’re staying,” she says. “Everyone just needs to plan not having après ski at a restaurant.” If you’re traveling with people outside of your household, Beuther recommends staying in separate places and only spending time with each other outdoors. Throughout the pandemic, the ski and snowboard industry has been actively preparing for the winter season with the coronavirus in mind. One noticeable change this year is the ticketing process. Many ski resorts are requiring prior reservations to better manage crowd sizes. “Some of the resorts are only selling their day tickets in advance online,” says Anelise Bergin, director of digital marketing and communications for Ski Utah, adding that some resorts may also be reducing parking capacity to limit guests. “Really plan out your trip and make sure that you look at the specific resort that you’re looking to travel to, and make sure that you completely understand all of their changes and their ticket process." Although capacity may be reduced at resorts, you should still be able to lock in your ski or snowboard time this winter. “For the vast majority of days, we think that we’ll be able to accommodate everyone who wants to be there,” Muscente says. “But you really have to plan for every day.” Travel during the pandemic: Tips: Holiday travel | Coronavirus testing | Sanitizing the hotel | Using Uber and Airbnb Flying: Packing | Airports | Staying healthy on plane | Mileage | Fly or drive | Best days to fly Road trips: Tips| Rental car | Snacks | Train | Foliage finder | Art road trips Camping: First-time | Camping alone | Meals | Glamping| National parks Places: Hawaii | Machu Picchu | New York | Private islands | Caribbean | Mexico | Europe

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Maryland crime report

Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, •Destruction to a vehicle •Destruction of property/vandalism •Theft from a vehicle •Thefts of vehicle parts and accessories •Tampering with a vehicle •Attempted vehicle theft •Credit or debit card theft •Identify theft •Lost property •Telephone misuse •Trespassing The following were among incidents reported by Anne Arundel County police. For information, call 410-222-8050. Crofton Area Crain Hwy. near Davidsonville Rd., Ferndale Area Baby Baer and Big Baer courts, Aster Dr., and Kimberley Lane, Glen Burnie Area Hideaway Loop, Foxridge Lane, Quarterfield Rd., Linthicum Heights Area Nursery Rd., 700 block, Nov. 2. From business. Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, Center St., Gemini Dr., Paddington Pl., Americana Dr., Americana Dr., Boxwood Rd., Cherry Grove Ave. S., Coybay Dr., Gemini Dr., Heritage Ct., Heritage Ct., Heritage Ct., Hilltop Lane, Hilltop Lane., Merryman Rd., Silopanna Rd., Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, Columbia Area Snowman Ct., Columbia Rd., Dark Fire Way, Hayshed Lane, Woodside Ct., Lynx Lane, Placid Lake Ct., Elkridge Area Ducketts Lane, Landing Rd., S. Hanover Rd., Ellicott City Area Corporate Ct., Halcyon Ct., Baltimore National Pike, Clarksville Pike, Pierce Dr., Thornbrook Rd., Valley View Overlook, Fulton Area Maple Lawn Blvd., Jessup Area Dorsey Run Rd., Waterloo Rd.,

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Anne Arundel County and Howard County home sales

Highland Farms Cir., Nob Hill Dr., Summer Hill Dr., GLEN BURNIE AREA Aster Dr., Hardmoore Ct., Rowe Dr., Washington Blvd., GLEN BURNIE-MARLEY CREEK AREA Boxwood Dr., Country Club Dr., Dumbarton Rd., Fox River Hills Way, Howard Rd., Martha Rd., Nabbs Creek Rd., Pine Way Dr., Rapid Water Way, Warfield St., HANOVER AREA Beaver Dam Ct., Hardwick Ct., Otterbein Way, Sycamore Pl., JESSUP AREA Horseshoe Cir., LAUREL AREA Carriage Walk Lane, Marsh Crossing Dr., LINTHICUM HEIGHTS AREA Charles Rd., Hampton Rd., Kingwood Rd., Regency Cir., LOTHIAN AREA Mallard Landing Ct., MILLERSVILLE AREA Caracle Ct., Mesa Rd. N., Old Mill Rd., Saddleback Ct., NORTH BEACH AREA Bay Front Ave., ODENTON AREA Bed Stone Lane, Cedar Elm Dr., Country Oak Dr., Greyswood Rd., Hinshaw Dr., Old Waugh Chapel Rd., Seneca Dr., Tuckahoe Ct., Williamsburg Lane, OWENSVILLE (WEST RIVER) AREA Judge Ct. E., PASADENA-ROCK CREEK AREA Barnsley Ct., Brookfield Rd., Champion Ct., Dunlap Rd., Escalon Ave., Highview Rd., Jacobia Dr., Kingsley Ct., Lyndale Rd., Mansion House Crossing, Paradise Beach Rd., Rockingham Ct., Wapati Ct., Whites Cove Rd., RIVA AREA Tudor Hall Rd., SEVERN AREA Beckman Terr., Chevron Rd., Dove Ct., Faulkner Rd., Huguenot Pl., McCamish Ct., Queenstown Rd., W B & A Rd., SEVERNA PARK AREA Baltimore Annapolis Blvd., Charington Ct., Fairhaven Ct., Knollwood Rd., McKinsey Rd., Park Rd., SHADY SIDE AREA Linden St., These sales data recorded by the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation in May were provided by Black Knight Inc. For information about other residential real estate transactions, visit washingtonpost.com/homesales. CENTENNIAL-BENSON AREA Cabery Rd., Coventry Court Dr., Firefly Way, Hannon Ct., Larchmede Ct., Mount Hebron Dr., Thornton Lane, Vivaldi Lane, Woodland Rd., CLARKSVILLE AREA Flutie Lane, Mill Creek Ct., COLUMBIA (EAST) AREA Enberend Terr., Hayshed Lane, Raccoon Ct., Swan Point Way, Thunder Hill Rd., Whiteacre Rd., COLUMBIA (WEST) AREA Clarksville Pike, 10545-Joel Barry Brown to Jacquelin D. Wiseman, $675,000. Cloudy April Way, Fallriver Row Ct., Moonfall Way, Ring Dove Lane, Timothy Ct., Wind Way E., Wyndham Cir., DAYTON AREA Oak Ridge Ct., ELKRIDGE AREA Abbey Rd., Beechfield Ave., Deborah Jean Dr., Huntshire Dr., Mt. Holly Way, Woodvale Pl., ELLICOTT CITY AREA Blueberry Hill Lane, Brittany Dr., Eastwood Pl., Four Quarter Rd., Hidden Garden Lane, Hunting Horn Dr., Mayfair Cir., Old Farm Lane, Roberts Rd., Sonia Trail, Trotters Chase, Trotters Chase, FULTON AREA Iager Blvd., Ports Lane, Tuckahoe Ct., GLENWOOD AREA Clarks Meadow Dr., HANOVER AREA Druce Way, Druce Way, Saint

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We’ve known how to fight the coronavirus since March. We just have to do it.

warning — and advice from world-leading experts. As we head into the fall and winter, we have to go back to the future to avert disaster. We have to actually implement the advice that was being given in March by the public health Cassandras, and we need to do so now. Here are four steps to avoid another catastrophe in the coming months. Implement nationwide testing: That is why I joined other experts in the spring to call for a nationwide surveillance system for the coronavirus, understanding that relatively small investments in our existing public health surveillance infrastructure could help us stay on top of local outbreaks. The great advantage: We could avoid widespread lockdowns using much more selective approaches to prevent community-wide spreading events. Such surveillance would depend not just on more testing but on “smarter testing.” Instead of simply focusing on positive test results, we need serosurveys of multiple communities; we need the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to move rapidly to help states and localities set up “sentinel testing” to act as an early warning system; and we need to investigate the data we already have through systems like syndromic surveillance. We needed to do all of this to answer four questions: Is the outbreak in a city or state getting better or worse? And how fast? Who is getting covid-19? And what are their outcomes? Today, we don’t have better answers to those questions than we had seven months ago. But if we want to keep opening up businesses without triggering large-scale outbreaks and shutdowns, we have to put these systems in place immediately. Get more PPE to the front lines: It is hard to believe, but eight months into this pandemic, many nursing homes and other health facilities across this country still didn’t have enough PPE. A big part of the problem remains that manufacturers and innovative companies are willing to ramp up production in the United States only if there is predictable demand, so they aren’t left with excess capacity and supplies that negate their investments. Just as it is doing with vaccine manufacturers, the federal government needs to sign long contracts for PPE to give manufacturers predictability and then distribute the supplies to vulnerable Americans and health facilities in need. And it still wouldn’t hurt to go through with the original plan and send masks to each household: A Washington Post-ABC News

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Trump is now sabotaging national security to soothe his bruised ego

So this will be President Trump’s parting gift to the nation: He is deliberately sabotaging the national security of the United States. His refusal to accept the results, even though it wasn’t a particularly close election, has taken an insidious new turn now that his political appointee in charge of authorizing the start of the Biden transition is refusing to give the okay. The delay undercuts all aspects of government’s functioning and leaves the country needlessly vulnerable to security threats. We’ve seen this before. In 2000, the delayed transition “hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees,” the 9/11 Commission concluded. To avoid a possible repeat of such a vulnerability, the commission recommended that “we should minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking during the change of administrations” so that “transitions can work more effectively and allow new officials to assume their new responsibilities as quickly as possible.” Trump is now actively undermining that recommendation — for no purpose other than ego. It would cost him nothing to begin the transition; in the extremely unlikely event that he is able to overturn the election results in several states and secure a victory, the transition authorization could easily be rescinded. Transition sources tell me the Trump administration also hasn’t yet complied with the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that “the outgoing administration should provide the president-elect, as soon as possible after election day, with a classified, compartmented list that catalogues specific, operational threats to national security; major military or covert operations; and pending decisions on the possible use of force.” “This is serious stuff. We are talking about the national security of the country, and Trump and Republicans on the Hill are playing politics with it,” John Bellinger , a former senior official on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told me. “The loss of time in a truncated transition really does pose a threat to the national security of the country.” Much of the outrage has focused on Emily Murphy, who as administrator of the General Services Administration has the formal task of “ascertaining” the winner of the election. She’s a longtime public servant who, I’m told, justifiably fears the wrath that Trump would bring down on her if she authorizes the transition. Hopefully she can be persuaded that avoiding another 9/11, or its equivalent, is worth getting fired or flamed

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Four SEC games, including Alabama-LSU, postponed as conference grapples with pandemic

left an open week before its Dec. 19 championship game to allow for games to be pushed back. However, that date is already being held for an LSU-Florida game that was postponed from Oct. 17 after an outbreak in the Gators’ program. Some SEC teams could still try to finish their schedules Dec. 19, but Alabama (6-0) is a heavy favorite to win its division and go to the SEC title game, and Florida (4-1) is leading the other division. “The opportunity to reschedule the Alabama at LSU game will need to be evaluated,” the SEC said. “The rescheduling of games on the remaining SEC football schedule may include December 19 as a playing date.” “We are dealing with covid and contact tracing. I can’t go into detail. It’s a very fluid situation,” Orgeron said Monday of his Tigers, who have started the season 2-3. He acknowledged that some unspecified starting players were affected by the outbreak but asserted then that the Tigers were “focused on playing Alabama on Saturday night.” LSU may have been down to one scholarship quarterback, freshman TJ Finley, and been perilously thin at other positions, per multiple reports. On Wednesday, Orgeron said that Zach Von Rosenberg, a 30-year-old punter, had played second-team quarterback. The SEC’s coronavirus policy mandates a minimum of 53 scholarship athletes be available for a team to play, including at least one quarterback, four defensive linemen and seven offensive linemen. Orgeron revealed his team’s outbreak “started last week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday.” He said the subsequent need to place numerous players in quarantine is “when you get into the low [scholarship] numbers.” Mississippi State Athletic Director John Cohen declared Monday that his football team did not have “the minimum number of scholarship student-athletes available” for the Auburn game because of positive tests, contact tracing and what he described as “non-covid injuries.” “While we are disappointed that Saturday’s game has been postponed, our priority is the health, safety and well-being of our student-athletes and staff,” Cohen added. “We will continue to follow all established protocols and evaluate the most responsible path to return to the field.” Mississippi State Coach Mike Leach told reporters Monday that his team was “close to canceling” its game this past weekend against Vanderbilt, which the Bulldogs won. “We knew there was a pretty good chance we’d have to cancel this week,” he said, “just because we were that

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These venues are high-risk areas for spreading the coronavirus, model suggests

on risk levels. That resulted in a chart listing different activities on a 1-to-10 risk level, with opening the mail being the least risky (1) and going to a bar, a sports stadium, a music concert or a religious service with more than 500 participants the most risky (9). That was not a scientific study but, rather, an aggregation of wisdom from some doctors. But the chart was distributed globally and translated into many languages — a sign of how much people wanted to know about how they might be able to safely coexist with the virus. Meanwhile, governors and mayors and their health department officials struggled to decide how to impose restrictions and for how long. Guidance offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had no regulatory power and was sometimes disregarded by local and state governments eager to reopen. Brute-force shutdowns — closing nonessential businesses, banning sporting events, imposing curfews, removing the rims and nets from basketball backboards — were employed in many states in March and April during the first desperate weeks of the pandemic, when infections were spreading exponentially in the Northeast and some large cities. Hospitals feared they would soon have to ration care. Those shutdowns reversed the course of the crisis in the United States while also crashing the economy. Many states reopened while still having large numbers of new infections, a premature move that health experts blame for the subsequent national spikes in cases in the summer and now again in the fall. Shutdowns remain unpopular with public officials and with many scientists and doctors who see the collateral effects on people who are economically vulnerable or need steady medical care or emergency treatment for health issues not related to covid-19. And so officials have hoped to find nuanced approaches to rising case numbers — something short of shutdowns but still effective at reversing the dangerous trends. Redbird said she plans to use mobility data to observe how the pandemic has warped our culture. “What I’m going to watch for: How long does it take for the pattern of human interaction to return to normal — or, even, if it does,” she said. Read more: New York’s block-by-block lockdowns are curbing covid-19. But residents aren’t pleased. Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective in first analysis, company reports Shutdowns prevented 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds

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The McPlant is coming. McDonald’s won’t name its supplier, but all signs point to Beyond Meat.

have introduced plant-based options in recent years, but most of these have been partnerships with Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat. Fast Food partnerships, from KFC to Dunkin' to Qdoba, have been key drivers of these brands’ national growth. McDonald’s decision to create its own plant-based line raises the question if other fast food chains will eventually do the same. Whether that happens or not, the introduction of a plant-based line by the world’s largest fast food chain will certainly challenge these brands’ dominance of the plant-based market.” Last year, McDonald’s worked with Beyond Meat to test out a P.L.T. (plant, lettuce and tomato) sandwich at select locations in Ontario, and Beyond Meat says it is involved in the production of the McPlant as well, which would make sense. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Impossible Foods pulled out of the competition to supply meatless burgers to McDonald’s, saying it could not produce enough to keep up with the chain’s demand. When contacted by The Post, Beyond Meat responded with a one-sentence statement through a spokesperson: “Beyond Meat and McDonald’s co-created a plant-based patty which will be available as part of their McPlant platform.” During an earnings call, Beyond Meat chief executive Ethan Brown said basically the same thing, that he felt “good about what we’re contributing to the McPlant platform,” according to a report by the Motley Fool. Brown added that he prefers when a chain brands its product with Beyond’s name, such as Carl’s Jr.'s Beyond Famous Star burger, but respects McDonald’s decision to stick with the McPlant handle. The questions around Beyond Meat’s involvement with the McPlant burger don’t seem to be helping the company’s stock, which dropped nearly 17 percent on Tuesday. When will America gets its hands on a McPlant burger? That, too, is a mystery. Borden said that some markets will begin taste-testing the sandwich next year but that a timetable was not immediately available. In a blog post on Monday, McDonald’s simply wrote, “Markets can adopt the McPlant when they’re ready and we expect some to test the burger next year.” In more-concrete news, McDonald’s said it will introduce a crispy chicken sandwich to restaurants across the country next year, a development that should come as welcome news to franchisees who had been waiting not-so-patiently to compete in the fast-food poultry wars. Described as a fried chicken fillet topped with crinkle-cut pickles and butter,

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What determined if schools reopened? How many Trump voters were in a district.

Debates about whether to open schools have raged since the summer. Whatever else might shape these decisions, it would make sense that the local intensity of covid-19 spread would play a major part: School districts with low rates of cases would be more likely to open than school districts with high rates. Those districts would likely stick with a more cautious, online-only approach. But a new study we conducted, examining some 10,000 school districts across the country — some 75 percent of the total — remarkably finds essentially no connection between covid-19 case rates and decisions regarding schools. Rather, politics is shaping the decisions: The two main factors that determined whether a school district opened in-person were the level of support in the district for Donald Trump in 2016 and the strength of teachers’ unions. A third factor, with a much smaller impact, was the amount of competition a school district faces from private schools, in particular Catholic schools. The finding is a testament to how the nationalization of partisan politics affects governance at all levels. Traditionally, local governments — and particularly school boards, whose members are often elected in nonpartisan, unusually timed elections — have been more technocratic than their state or federal counterparts. Public officials at the local level concentrate on problems like keeping streets paved and deciding whether to build a new elementary school or buy new buses. Yet this study suggests that the polarizing politics of red and blue caused school boards to drift away from a dispassionate analysis of covid-19 numbers toward the political preferences of their constituents. The “nationalization” of local politics at all levels has been observed for years by political scientists, but this may be the first time it has been documented so starkly in school boards. The database of school districts we used included information about whether school districts opened — and to what extent. To capture the prevalence of covid-19 cases, we drew on information from Johns Hopkins University; we focused mainly on the number of new cases per 10,000 in the last two weeks of August in each district, when many school boards were making their first decisions about whether to open in-person. The measure indicating support for Trump was straightforward: the share of votes in each district for Trump. The link between covid-19 cases and a decision to open was minuscule and inconsistent: We found no statistical link

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The best barbecue joints in the D.C. area

elegant tangle of smoke, acid, flesh and fat. Their spare ribs are textbook, the kind that let you sink your teeth into them, feeling that small, electric tug of meat from bone. Their chicken and Texas sausage hold their own, though the former’s aggressive seasonings can sometimes overwhelm the delicate white meat. Texas Jack’s brisket, usually its main attraction, was uncharacteristically tight on my recent order, as if the moisture had been leached from the slices. I chalked this up to the pandemic and the problem of slicing meats too early for takeaway, giving the beef time to degrade before unwitting customers (or a critic) can pick up their orders. 2761 Washington Blvd., Arlington. 703-875-0477. DCity has ditched the traditional smokehouse hierarchy, in which a single pitmaster leads the crew and gets all the recognition (and the higher salary). Instead, Southeast Restaurant Group has instituted a team approach to smoking meats at DCity, where they keep a large-capacity J&R smoker running 24/7. The approach has paid off handsomely for the brand that debuted seven years ago as a tiny takeout with a big reputation. (If you’ll recall, Federalist Pig’s Sonderman was the pitmaster then, back when DCity still believed in a top-down structure.) No matter what meat you order at DCity — turkey, brisket, wings, pulled pork, spare ribs — it will arrive bathed in beautiful wood smoke, a mixture of fruit woods and post oak. In a region where barbecue joints often try to skate by with machines that can barely cough up a decent cloud of wood smoke, DCity is the real deal. The place is at the top of its game. 203 Florida Ave. NW. 202-733-1919. Not only did co-owners Debby Portillo and Fernando Gonzalez open their restaurant during a pandemic, but they did so while also trying to renew their L-1A visas. Both circumstances have presented unique challenges to the couple from El Salvador. “To all that we’ve been through, now we have to add the renewal process. It’s a lot for us,” says Portillo, whose family has a long history of running restaurants and pupuserias back in the home country. 2Fifty is a joint project from Portillo, Gonzalez and Portillo’s father, Samuel, and it is singularly dedicated to Texas-style barbecue, under whose spell Gonzalez fell after a tour of Lone Star State smokehouses. The couple started out selling sandwiches and ingenious vacuum-sealed meats at farmers

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Trump may be headed out the door, but Saudi Arabia’s global enablers remain

In November 2017, Jamal Khashoggi told me “In Saudi Arabia, we cannot choose our leaders. We can only hope they get it right.” Less than a year later, the Post contributing columnist would be murdered by agents of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a leader he did not choose. Throughout his bloodstained rise to and consolidation of power, MBS, as the crown prince is generally known, placed his hopes in President Trump and Jared Kushner. But on Saturday, the news was official: The United States voted out Trump, electing Joseph Biden as the 46th president of the United States. According to conventional wisdom, now that the American people have sent the Trump administration packing, MBS should be shaking in his thobe. But the harsher reality is that the systems that have helped paved the way for Saudi Arabia’s current trail of tyranny are still very much in place. Trump and Kushner, almost from the very beginning of the Trump administration, signaled that Saudi Arabia would be given extra special treatment. “We put our man on top,” Trump reportedly bragged when Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince after wrenching power from his older cousin in 2017. Saudi Arabia was the first country that the then-freshly elected and notoriously travel-averse Trump flew to early in 2017, to an extravagant fete put on by the regime, which is said to have spent as much as $68 million on the summit. MBS would go on to say, “Trump was the right person at the right time” for Saudi Arabia. The Saudi and Emirati governments reportedly offered the Trump campaign help to win the 2016 election, according to the New York Times. In 2018, MBS reportedly bragged that he had Kushner “in his pocket,” according to the Intercept. While Trump has been in office, Saudi Arabia has arrested influential personalities and activists, including women’s rights advocates. It also tried to pursue an impulsive war against Qatar, and imposed a blockade on the country. Kushner reportedly gave advice to Mohammed bin Salman on how to weather the storm after Jamal’s gruesome murder, and Trump later bragged to Bob Woodward about shielding MBS from congressional scrutiny. Jamal’s assassination was personal and devastating. But the entire country of Yemen has been bludgeoned by Saudi Arabia and its partners in the gulf coalition that has orchestrated airstrikes against it since 2015. The United States has been one of

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Chad Wolf planning Latin America trip amid staff concerns about coronavirus

Acting Department of Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf is making plans to travel to several countries in Latin America next month, a proposal that has raised concerns about the necessity of such a trip in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The trip is tentatively scheduled for the week of Dec. 7, and it could include stops in El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador, according to three people with knowledge of the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the preparations. The United States has more confirmed coronavirus infections than any other country in the world, but Latin American nations have been especially hard-hit, and Brazil and Colombia have mortality rates from the disease that exceed the U.S. mark, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. There are no major conferences for Wolf to attend in the region that week, and at least one person familiar with the outlines of the plan referred to the trip as “a boondoggle.” “There are no specific events requiring the travel,” the person said. “The region is hard-hit by covid and embassies will be hard-pressed to deal with so many visitors in a covid-safe way.” In addition to top aides, Wolf’s travel would require a Secret Service security detail and the assistance of embassy staffers in each nation. Homeland Security officials declined to discuss Wolf’s tentative plans. “The Department of Homeland Security does not comment on allegedly leaked documents,” spokesman Alexei Woltornist said in a statement. “The Department will continue to carry out its mission protecting the Homeland.” One person with knowledge of the plans said the purpose of the trip would be to advance discussions on a range of topics, from cargo security to cybercrime and criminal fugitives. The DHS delegation will observe the same diplomatic protocols followed by the State Department to minimize the risk of spreading the coronavirus, the person said. While a stop in Brazil is the least likely of the five nations on the itinerary, the other four remain part of Wolf’s plans, the person said. Under Trump, DHS has signed “asylum cooperation agreements” with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that allow U.S. authorities to take migrants seeking humanitarian protections and fly them to Central America instead. The agreement with Guatemala is the only one that has taken effect, but Trump administration officials have sought to reach bilateral agreements

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Boris Johnson’s Brexit has a Joe Biden problem

the former vice president to Western leaders, including those of France, Germany and, it did not go unnoticed, Ireland. In the call to Johnson, Biden stressed his support for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Ireland, which was brokered by President Bill Clinton and ended decades of sectarian bloodshed. Biden emphasized the importance of implementing Brexit in a way that supports the still ongoing peace process, British officials said. In its readout of the call, Downing Street did not mention Northern Ireland. Biden has made a big deal of his Irish heritage. And alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), he has warned the British that there will be no U.S.-Britain trade deal if Brexit undercuts the free movement of people and goods in an Ireland where the old militarized land frontier between north and south has been removed, and the border today is invisible. Candidate Biden warned that “any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border.” Johnson has potentially upset that delicate balance with legislation to carry out his version of a Brexit, called the Internal Market Bill, which one of his own ministers called a violation of international law. In the event that Britain cannot strike a trade deal with the European Union, the bill would place a priority on the free flow of goods between Northern Ireland and Britain, which in turn could reintroduce border checks to the island — between the Republic of Ireland, a part of the European Union, and Northern Ireland, a part of Britain. In their 20-minute telephone call, Biden and Johnson sought common ground, “promoting global health security; pursuing a sustainable economic recovery; combating climate change; strengthening democracy, and working together on issues such as the Western Balkans and Ukraine,” according to the Biden transition team. But there is a question about how much Washington will need London in a post-Brexit world. Before Brexit, U.S. administrations could count on Britain to serve as an ally and proxy in Europe. But in a speech Tuesday in the House of Lords, former British prime minister John Major warned that Johnson’s Brexit makes Britain less important. “Suddenly, we are no longer an irreplaceable bridge between Europe and America. We are now less relevant to them both,” said Major, a member of Johnson’s Conservative Party. “We are a top second-rank power,

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This is what the pandemic is doing to the country

On Wednesday, 31 states were at the highest seven-day averages of new coronavirus cases they had seen since the pandemic erupted this year. Twenty-two states were reporting more hospitalizations than at any previous point. Ten states saw their highest seven-day averages of deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. We are in the middle of the third coronavirus surge the country has seen over 2020. The first ended in early April after the number of new cases confirmed each day reached 31,000. The second began in early June, just as Vice President Pence was writing that the country was not undergoing a second wave of infections. By July 22, the country was seeing 67,000 new cases a day before the surge receded. The current surge, the third, began Sept. 12. It is ongoing, with the country exceeding 127,000 new cases Wednesday — as many cases that day as were added in total from the beginning of the pandemic through March 28. The situation is bad. The map below shows case, hospitalization and death data relative to each state’s peak and as a function of population. It also shows the rate of positive tests in each state, a measure of how broadly the virus is spreading. In 28 states, at least 10 percent of tests are coming back positive. (Data on hospitalizations and positive rates are from the COVID Tracking Project.) The White House has repeatedly touted the fact that a smaller percentage of those who contract the virus are dying than earlier in the pandemic, which is true. It is also true both that the ratio of new cases to deaths has been fairly steady since early July and that the current surge in cases threatens to fill hospitals with coronavirus patients, reducing hospital capacity for any type of patient, covid-19-related or not. The point of “flattening the curve” this year wasn’t just to limit the spread of the virus; it was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. In some states, they already are. What the interactive above tracks is not just the spread of the virus but the administration’s embrace of a hands-off approach to containing it. In mid-August, President Trump added neuroradiologist Scott Atlas to the White House coronavirus task force, where he began advocating for a policy of allowing the virus to spread while protecting vulnerable individuals and increasing hospital capacity. Those latter two goals

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‘Covid-hell.’ ‘Humanitarian disaster.’ Experts sound the alarm about U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

short on beds and staff. “Our hospitals are full,” Megan Ranney, an emergency medicine professor at Brown University, said in an interview. “Our workers are getting sick. And it is simply overwhelming the system.” The rapid rise in hospitalizations could foreshadow a long period of rising deaths, said Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration. Although improvements in care have pushed the mortality rate below 1 percent in the United States, 1,549 people died of the virus Wednesday, the highest toll since April. The distribution of hospitalizations across the country means it will be hard for health-care workers from one region of the country to serve as backup in another area, Gottlieb wrote on Twitter. The only slightly reassuring news is that most hospitals have not entered true crisis mode, he said Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Every hospital system is a little pressed right now,” Gottlieb said. “There’s only a handful that are really overwhelmed: Wisconsin, parts of Texas, Utah, South and North Dakota.” But the trends suggest that that could change. Osterholm said ballooning numbers of infections nationwide mean more hospitals could soon look like those in El Paso, where health-care workers are bringing in mobile morgues and airlifting patients to other cities. “We have to tell the story of what’s coming; people don’t want to hear that El Paso isn’t an isolated event,” he told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. “It will become the norm.” Frieden tweeted that the United States has entered “the exponential phase” of virus spread and that the situation will worsen significantly before it improves. But he emphasized that policy decisions have an impact, and throwing in the towel is the wrong solution. “Not all of the US is experiencing the same rate of Covid spread — some states are doing much better than others,” he wrote. “For example, South Dakota (the state with the highest rate) has 100 times more spread than Vermont right now.” Individual decisions also make a difference, Gottlieb said, especially as people prepare to travel and visit people outside their household for Thanksgiving. The transmission of the virus tracks closely with people’s movement in their communities. “If people on the whole just go to the store one less time a week, you could substantially reduce spread,” Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.” The lack of that kind of self-sacrifice is one factor that Ranney said she believes

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A covid-19 vaccine might be tough to distribute in countries at war

populations may refuse to be vaccinated, and some may even launch forms of violent resistance. Suspicions and violence against health workers are nothing new — misinformed people across Europe murdered surgeons, physicians, pharmacists and nurses in response to cholera outbreaks in the 19th and 20th centuries, for instance. When Ebola broke out in 2014 in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, protesters could be seen carrying signs declaring “Ebola is a lie!” Some people engaged in violent attacks on clinics, health workers and burial teams, resulting in numerous deaths of humanitarian workers. There’s evidence that public awareness campaigns in the form of radio advertisements, signs and door-to-door canvassing resulted in greater compliance with measures that prevent the spread of Ebola. With violence against health workers often driven by fear or anger, humanitarian organizations have adopted strategies like recruiting trusted community members and training them to deliver accurate public health information as a way to broaden support for their work. In the Ebola example, people tended to associate security forces accompanying vaccination teams with distrust and fear of forced vaccination — while vaccination teams without military escorts typically encountered far more willing communities. The international medical assistance group Doctors Without Borders, for instance, generally refuses military support, believing this approach generates less suspicion from armed groups. In this year’s increasingly polarized political environment, misinformation and skepticism pose a truly global challenge to efforts to combat the coronavirus. In a September survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans worried that pressure from the Trump administration would prompt the Food and Drug Administration to rush the approval of a covid-19 vaccine, and potentially ignore safety concerns. Other surveys suggest Republicans in particular have grown distrustful of scientists including Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — a Trump adviser on the pandemic whose covid-19 advice has often been at odds with the president’s views. These findings suggest that from Washington to more remote areas in conflict-affected countries, building up trust in government messaging will be an important part of the global covid-19 response. In order for vaccination campaigns to work, public health officials note it is essential that governments present a clear and consistent message to build public confidence in vaccine programs. Higher levels of trust in government are linked to individuals being more likely to accept vaccines. Professors: Don’t miss TMC’s expanding list of classroom topic guides. Jori Breslawski

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As coronavirus soars, hospitals hope to avoid an agonizing choice: Who gets care and who goes home

patients, nearly 3,000 are on ventilators — more than double the number of ventilated patients as of Oct. 1, according to The Post’s coronavirus tracking data. With the rise in infections came more disturbing news: a significant uptick in the number of people who have died: 1,408 more deaths were reported as of Wednesday evening. Tennessee, Alabama and Minnesota all reached new highs in their daily death tolls. In Illinois, there was a new high of infections again — 12,657 — marking a toll of at least 10,000 cases each day over the past week. The state’s number of hospitalized covid-19 patients is at 5,042, topping the old high set near the end of April. Its 153 deaths was just short of a record set in late May. In Ohio, more than 2,745 people are hospitalized with covid-19, a number that has doubled in the last 16 days, according to health department data analyzed by The Post. The state also reported 76 additional deaths and 5,874 new test-confirmed infections. In Iowa, a record number of patients are in intensive care. The state had a record high of new cases, 4,764, along with 26 new deaths, according to The Post’s tracker. “The cat’s already out of the bag,” said Albert Ko, an infectious-disease physician at the Yale School of Public Health who’s treating covid-19 patients. “We’re having widespread transmission. It’s going to get worse, certainly for the next month.” A group of Illinois health-care workers wrote an open letter to Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) on Monday predicting that “Illinois will surpass its ICU bed capacity by Thanksgiving.” Two leaders of the group, the Illinois Medical Professionals Action Collaborative Team (IMPACT), said Illinois is “on a bad trajectory.” “Cases have been rising really sharply, especially in Illinois, where for the past four days we had more than 10,000 cases, which was the highest number of cases that a state had experienced,” said Vineet Arora, chief executive of the team. Arora, who is also a hospitalist at the University of Chicago, is afraid the rate of infection will reach a point similar to New York at the height of its spring surge, “where physicians were having to decide, does this patient have a higher chance of surviving, or this patient?” Anticipating a further surge in coronavirus patients, the Cleveland Clinic hospital system decided to postpone most nonessential

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Sports were a distraction from the pandemic. Now they’re being battered by it.

called off a game, and two other programs, Seton Hall and Minnesota, announced they were pausing activities. The Ivy League took the extraordinary — or sensible — step of calling off all winter sports Thursday. “What America has to understand is that we are about to enter covid hell,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an adviser to President-elect Joe Biden and the director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, during a CNBC interview. “It is happening.” We may be en route to hell, but the International Olympic Committee expressed confidence this week that some fans would be allowed at the rescheduled Olympics in July. The sports world remains a utopia of optimism and tunnel vision. Of course, hope means nothing to this coronavirus. It can be defeated only by science, and for now, the best defense is diligence about wearing masks, social distancing and following health protocols. Sports have set a decent example. But as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said recently, “Ninety percent [compliance] is not good enough in this environment.” And it’s a tall order to ask large groups of people to grade out better than 90 percent at anything. It was a worthwhile reset for most major sports to take a break from mid-March to late July. They learned plenty about the virus, and time helped the NBA, WNBA and NHL develop bubble concepts to complete their seasons. Other enterprises figured out some best practices, too. But since then, you have seen the problems with waiting. The nation has neither developed a uniform strategy nor agreed to adhere to the simplest measures for people to protect each other. Now the virus is out of control. For leagues determined to play, it seems best not to delay. In hindsight, the Big Ten and Pac-12 should have tried to stay on schedule instead of initially opting to delay until the new year, only to change their minds to keep up with their peers. Now they’re late to the party and experiencing the same issues as programs that started in September. The difference is they’re at a competitive disadvantage trying to cram in their seasons before the scheduled start of the College Football Playoff. Consider what the NBA is doing, rushing back to play by Christmas after just finishing a season that lasted into October. Why not wait and hold out hope for a

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Mortgage rates climb on news of coronavirus vaccine breakthrough

competing forces that will keep rates in an uneven pattern,” Michael Borodinsky, vice president of Caliber Home Loans in Edison, N.J., said in an email. “The current higher rates of covid-19 infections could force local economies to shut down, which would in turn support lower mortgage rates. The longer-term hopes for a successful vaccine will boost the economy and push rates marginally higher.” Borodinsky added that with the Fed’s plan to stick with its purchase of mortgage-backed securities until at least 2023, “we can expect mortgage rates to remain near historically low levels for the foreseeable future.” Freddie Mac’s averages come from its Primary Mortgage Market Survey — a questionnaire sent every week to 80 lenders nationwide to capture the rates they’re offering buyers. The survey is confined to borrowers with excellent credit seeking conventional mortgages making a 20 percent down payment. “Mortgage rates jumped this week as a result of positive news about a COVID-19 vaccine,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in a statement. “Despite this rise, mortgage rates remain about a percentage point below a year ago and the low rate environment is supportive of both purchase and refinance demand. Heading into late fall, the housing market continues to grow and buttress the economy.” Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, said he thinks that, given the vaccine news, “we’ve seen the bottom for mortgage rates. But we won’t see any notable increases, either.” The existence of the vaccine means that the economy will grow in 2021 and investors will be less likely to invest in safe assets such as mortgage bonds, Yun said. For buyers, the difference in monthly payment on a $400,000 30-year fixed-rate loan at this week’s rate of 2.84 percent, compared with last year at this time, when the rate was 3.75 percent, is about $200 per month. However, Yun said, fast-rising home prices negate some of the impact of low-interest rates. Meanwhile, the high demand from buyers, driven by the low interest rates, is squeezing the supply of homes for sale. Thus, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the overall number of borrowers seeking mortgages fell slightly. The market composite index, which measures the volume of both application types, dropped 0.5 percent from last week. The purchase index decreased 5 percent from last week but rose 16 percent from a year ago. The refinance index rose 1 percent

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Here’s what travelers can expect from Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales during the pandemic

it a hotel room or plane tickets, make sure to check prices ahead of time to compare them with offerings during the sale. It is the best way to find out just how good of a deal you can secure. Because time is arbitrary in 2020, Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are no longer tethered to their day. Many retailers started their holiday sales back in October. EF Go Ahead Tours And who says the holiday has to stop in November? The DoubleTree Suites by Hilton in downtown Salt Lake City, for one, is offering its “buy one, get one free” Black Friday deal (with chocolate chip cookie on arrival) through the end of the year. Healdsburg Inn on the Plaza in California wine country is offering 50 percent off stays when booked between Nov. 27, 2020, through April 1, 2021. Because of the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, it’s nearly impossible to make concrete travel plans. Travel brands are offering deals accordingly. “There will be a lot more flexibility at play than they’ve seen in years past,” Corwin says, adding that travelers should be looking for great deals but also for the most lenient cancellation or rescheduling policies. She says many airlines and hotels have implemented flexible policies as is, but she is seeing many offer further flexibility during the sales. Many companies are offering bookings without cancellation or change fees. For example, Intrepid Travel’s sale is offering 20 percent off international trips and 10 percent off domestic trips that may be changed without a fee 21 days before scheduled departures — whether that’s for a new travel date or a completely different trip. In Florida, the 30 percent off Black Friday and Cyber Monday trips to Margaritaville Resort Orlando and Encore Resort at Reunion can be canceled without fees and come with resort credits to sweeten the deal. Travel during the pandemic: Tips: Safe holiday travel | Coronavirus testing | Sanitizing your hotel | Using Uber and Airbnb Flying: Pandemic packing | Airport protocol | Staying healthy on plane | Fly or drive | Best days to fly Road trips: Tips | Rental cars | Best snacks | Long-haul trains | Foliage finder | Art road trips Camping: First-time | Camping alone | Meal planning | Glamping | National parks Places: Hawaii | Machu Picchu | New York | Private islands | Caribbean | Mexico | Europe

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The Health 202: The U.S. is poised for another wave of covid-19 deaths, public health experts warn

with Alexandra Ellerbeck Lately, the U.S. election has overshadowed the coronavirus pandemic. Yet in the background the virus has been spreading more rapidly than ever before, positioning the nation for yet another surge in fatalities — and one that could prove more deadly than either of the first two waves over the spring and summer. “I’m very concerned about the attention having shifted away from the pandemic crisis,” Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote me in an email. “The exponential spread has continued unabated, while much of the country’s attention has been election-centric.” Over the past week, an average of more than 120,000 people have tested positive every day, about double the rate in July. On Tuesday, the United States reached another one-day record, with more than 135,000 new cases. And this time, cases are spreading the fastest in the country’s center. At least five states, including Missouri and Wisconsin, set single-day highest for fatalities on Tuesday, Brady Dennis, Jacqueline Dupree and Marisa Iati report. At least five more — including Illinois and Pennsylvania — set single-day highs for new cases. Bloomberg News reporter Steven Dennis: Hannah Meisel, an NPR reporter who covers Illinois: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R): “As a worrisome summer gives way to a harrowing fall, the nation’s surge of coronavirus cases shows no signs of easing,” they write. “With little help and scant guidance from a Washington stuck in political limbo, some states and localities rushed to put in place new restrictions aimed at slowing the virus’s spread. Still, almost every metric appeared headed in an ominous direction.” Almost no part of the country is exempt. Infections are surging in the greater Washington region, which now has a rolling seven-day average of more than 3,000 daily new cases across D.C., Maryland and Virginia. In New York, daily new cases have doubled over the past three weeks. Even California, which has implemented some of the strictest mitigation measures, reported its testing positivity rate has risen above 4 percent for the first time since late August. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said “it scares the hell out of me.” “This is like one huge coronavirus forest fire, and I don’t think it’s going to spare much human wood out there unless we change our behavior,” Osterholm told my colleagues. Osterholm is among a host

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The Health 202: The U.S. is poised for another wave of covid-19 deaths, public health experts warn

traditional aversion to confronting its member countries has come at a high price,” Maria writes. “As covid-19 spread, WHO often shied away from calling out countries, as big donors such as Japan, France and Britain made repeated mistakes, according to dozens of leaked recordings of internal WHO meetings and documents from January to April.” The Trump administration cited WHO's refusal to publicly call out China for failing to share information in its decision to cut off funds to the agency and withdraw the United States. Biden has said that he intends to reverse that decision. The World Health Organization's annual meeting with delegations from member states is taking place this week. In the wake of Pfizer’s announcement of early data suggesting 90 percent effectiveness for its coronavirus vaccine, other drugmakers are lining to stake their own claims as top contenders in a fierce competition to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Moderna on Wednesday said that it has enough data for a first interim-analysis of its Phase 3 vaccine trial. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said he expected data to be available in a week or less. Because investigators are not conducting so-called challenge trials, in which participants are purposefully infected with the virus, they must wait until a number of people in their study group have been naturally infected and then analyze the data to see how many of these individuals are from the placebo group versus how many received a vaccine. Surging cases across the United States have sped clinical trials along by increasing the number of infections in the study groups. Russia also announced that its coronavirus vaccine, known as Sputnik V, is 92 percent effective, although the scientists have not released details from the study or the trial protocols. The results are also based on only 20 cases, which may make them less compelling than the 94 confirmed cases in the data from Pfizer and BioNTech, although scientists have said that the results are not implausible. In Brazil, meanwhile, the nation's health regulator gave the go-ahead to resume trials of a vaccine developed by the Chinese firm Sinovac. The trials were briefly suspended after a volunteer died, although the Brazilian partner in charge of the trial said that the death was unrelated to the vaccine. Both China and Russia approved their vaccines for emergency use at home before completion of Phase 3 trials. “Of

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A nest filled with hundreds of ‘murder hornets’ was destroyed ‘just in the nick of time,’ officials say

captured specimens. They followed them back to the nest, which Spichiger said was located less than 30 feet from a children’s play set. At approximately 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 24, Spichiger and his team of scientists set up scaffolding around an alder tree in the Sheltons’ backyard to reach the nest, which stood about eight feet off the ground, according to KOMO. They blocked off most of the opening with a thick foam covering and wrapped cellophane around the trunk. As some entomologists hit the tree to stir up the hornets, others sucked up the insects through a vacuum hose stuck in the remaining opening to the nest. “The whole thing was just wild,” Shelton told the TV station. Before pumping the tree with carbon dioxide and sealing it with foam cellophane, scientists managed to capture nearly 100 hornets, including two queens. But more insects remained, so officials returned later that week to finish carrying out their plan. On Oct. 28, they used a chain saw to cut off the part of the tree that contained the nest, taking this segment of the trunk back to a laboratory at Washington State University to analyze the nest. Inside a walk-in cooler, where the cold temperatures stunted the insects’ mobility, the scientists cracked the tree open with a sledgehammer and collected hornets at various stages of life. Of approximately 500 insects collected throughout the operation, Spichiger said they found nearly 200 queens — an especially concerning figure because most of them were virgins, meaning they would later leave their nest, mate and then start their own colonies following the winter. “There’s no doubt that had we not intervened and destroyed this nest, we would be starting with that number of 200,” he said during the news conference this week. Because the hornets are well-suited to live in many parts of the West Coast — and anywhere east of the Mississippi River — it was crucial to remove the nest to protect honeybees, which act as pollinators for a wide array of agricultural production, Spichiger said. Entomologists in his department have continued monitoring the area for additional nests in recent weeks and plan to do so through Thanksgiving. “Even though we’re fighting this fight in Washington right now, it literally is for the rest of the country,” he added. “To protect our managed pollinator system alone is a great reason to do it.”

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China forces ouster of Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers, quashing opposition

HONG KONG — China forced the ouster of four pro-democracy lawmakers from Hong Kong's legislature Wednesday, triggering a mass walkout of opposition legislators and solidifying Beijing's stranglehold on the city. The move, announced by Hong Kong officials after Beijing issued a new directive to disqualify lawmakers it deemed unpatriotic, represented a decisive blow that virtually eliminates opposition in the legislature for the first time since Hong Kong's handover from Britain in 1997. Beijing’s ruling, bypassing Hong Kong’s courts and political structures, underlined its efforts to sharply curb the financial center’s autonomy. The intervention and its timing also signaled to President-elect Joe Biden that the ruling Communist Party has no intention of easing its crackdown on Hong Kong, a subject of bitter dispute between the United States and China. The four lawmakers — among them accountant Kenneth Leung and lawyer Alvin Yeung, who leads a liberal party — were barred in July from seeking reelection in legislative contests that were originally scheduled for September but that the government postponed for a year, citing the coronavirus. They were initially told they could stay on until the elections. But on Wednesday, Beijing passed a resolution that any lawmakers who support Hong Kong’s independence, or are otherwise deemed unpatriotic for reasons such as petitioning foreign powers to intervene in the city’s affairs, must be disqualified. Pro-democracy representatives had already threatened to resign en masse if that happened, and they announced hours later that they would walk out of the legislature, saying it was no longer a legitimate political forum. “They have totally given up on ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong,” said Wu Chi-wai, leader of the Democratic Party, referring to the framework by which the city enjoyed autonomy within China. “Our colleagues are being disqualified by the central government’s ruthless rules.” They would formally resign Thursday, he said, adding, “We will continue to fight, and find a path.” Almost a dozen pro-democracy legislators In a news conference, the four expressed sadness and dismay, and said they had fought for the democratic principles in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution and laws. “We are all professional people, giving up a lot of our time and resources because we want to fight for justice and the core values of Hong Kong,” said Leung, who has represented the accountancy sector for the past eight years. In a previous interview with The Washington Post, Leung pushed back against the

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Maryland game against Ohio State canceled after eight Terps test positive for coronavirus

Maryland’s football game against Ohio State has been canceled because of an elevated number of coronavirus cases within the Terrapins’ program, the school announced Wednesday. It is the eighth major college football game scheduled for this weekend to be postponed or canceled because of coronavirus concerns, five of them involving Top 25 teams. The No. 3 Buckeyes were scheduled to visit College Park on Saturday, but eight Maryland players tested positive for the coronavirus in the past week, the school said in a statement. Following a recommendation from university health officials, the decision to pause team activities and cancel the game was made by Athletic Director Damon Evans and Darryll Pines, the president of the university. “There is nothing more important than the health and well-being of our student-athletes, coaches and staff,” Evans said in a statement. “We realize that this news is disappointing to all of the Maryland fans out there who were looking forward to the Terps taking on an outstanding Ohio State team, but the responsible thing for us to do is pause football activities, given the number of positive cases currently in our program.” Every weekend since the college football season began, a handful of games have been postponed or canceled. With cases spiking across the United States, an increasing number of games are being affected. Four SEC games were postponed this weekend, leaving only three matchups on the conference’s schedule. “We’ve seen disruption in every conference and in leagues at the professional level, so the fact that we have disruption this week is not fully news,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told reporters Wednesday. “The significance of the number of contests affected fully is.” The SEC scheduled its conference championship game for Dec. 19 with an open date Dec. 12. Many of the postponed games were rescheduled for Dec. 12, but with the number of affected games increasing each week, it is becoming more difficult to fit them into the schedule. The SEC said in a statement that Dec. 19 could be considered for rescheduled games involving teams not in the title game. “It’s a difficult circumstance, no way to paint it otherwise, but we knew that challenges would emerge for college sports,” Sankey said. “... We’ll continue to move forward with our efforts to support healthy competition leading us to a conference championship in football. That’s been our goal while acknowledging the potential for adjustments

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Prisons and jails have become a ‘public health threat’ during the pandemic, advocates say

at freeing people from prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities, with limited success largely because a 1996 law limits inmates’ ability to sue. Now, advocates say, those gains are being eroded, leading to fears about additional outbreaks and mounting death tolls. A recent overview by the Covid, Corrections, and Oversight Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that the death curve in Texas prisons remains “stubbornly high”; in one East Texas prison, the Duncan Unit, nearly 6 percent of inmates have died. “The truth is, there is really only one way to meaningfully reduce the risk of spread, and that is to release enough people to make it possible for those who remain to socially distance,” Dolovich said. In some cases, courts or governments are intervening to reduce prison and jail populations. After an outbreak at San Quentin State Prison, a California appellate court ruled in October that the facility must halve its inmate population by releasing or moving nearly 1,500 people. Infections erupted at San Quentin in May after officials transferred 121 inmates from a facility in Chino, Calif. Though the Chino prison was suffering its own outbreak, officials took no steps to keep the new arrivals separate from the existing population. Since then, more than 2,200 prisoners have tested positive in San Quentin, along with 298 staff members. Twenty-eight inmates and one worker have died in what the court called the “worst epidemiological disaster in California correctional history.” The prison’s failure to adopt and implement measures to protect prisoners is “morally indefensible and constitutionally untenable,” the court wrote. A San Quentin representative did not respond to requests for comment. Across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has released nearly 6,000 inmates in four months, bringing the state’s prison population to its lowest level in three decades. Thousands of additional inmates are deemed vulnerable and eligible for release. In New Jersey, which has recorded more virus-related prison deaths than almost any state in the nation, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed legislation last month that could free about 20 percent of state inmates, primarily people within a year of release. The first 2,200 were freed last week. New Jersey is an outlier. Dolovich said about half the reduction in jail population has been erased since May. Prison numbers have shown less change. And while there is too little public testing information to determine whether infections have ramped up as

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Prisons and jails have become a ‘public health threat’ during the pandemic, advocates say

one time, and have the results rolling in all day and all night long, you’re going to make the best decisions at the time,” she said. To keep the infected and noninfected apart, “you’re literally talking about moving literally hundreds of people every day.” Since the outbreaks, “we’ve completely changed our testing plan and how we deal with outbreaks,” she said, adding that the facility now tests prisoners at “decision points,” including when an inmate enters or is released from the prison and during contact tracing. “We’ve had very good outcomes, comparatively speaking,” Chambers-Smith said. As of Monday, the Pickaway death toll stood at 35. Before the virus was detected at Pickaway, inmates worried that guards didn’t take the threat seriously. For example, Harold Davis III saw Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) on the news telling people to wash their hands, keep surfaces clean and stay six feet apart. So when a corrections officer wearing latex gloves tried to pat Davis down as he was leaving the chow hall, Davis asked to shake out his pockets himself. “I don’t want you touching me with that pair of gloves that you just touched three or four hundred people with,” said Davis, who is in prison for drug trafficking, theft and vandalism. But he said the officer told him to shut up and patted him down anyway. After Viney’s death, the Ohio National Guard was deployed to Pickaway to help with testing. Work was suspended at the ­prison-run meatpacking facility, which processes food that is then sold to Kroger and Heinen’s grocery stores. But prisoners kept getting sick. Inmates described seeing ambulances — sometimes six at a time — outside the prison, and receiving little information about who was infected. Timothy Bailey, who is serving a 10-year sentence for drug trafficking, recalled being worried about his friend James Webb, 64. Webb, locked up for nearly five years on rape charges, suffered from a bone marrow disease. “If you touched him, he’d bruise,” Bailey said. Webb died of covid-19 on April 27. Another covid victim, Christopher Malone, 68, had been in prison since 1987 for murder and felonious assault. Tavaughn Lewis, 27, remembered Malone as a father figure. In prison for manslaughter since he was 19, Lewis said Malone was the rare older inmate who looked out for him and told him he had value. Lewis said it fell to him to tell

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Daily coronavirus infections surpass 3,000 in D.C. region, setting record for eighth day

Ralph Northam (D) on Tuesday urged residents to follow health protocols to slow the virus’s spread, but said it is not the time to toughen enforcement or impose new restrictions. D.C. officials this week said they are regularly evaluating restrictions. Maryland is recording an average of 23 new cases each day per 100,000 residents, a statistic that stands at 18 in Virginia and 16 in the District. The national average Wednesday stood at 37 new cases per 100,000 residents. Caseloads have been rising in the Washington region for weeks. Health experts say colder weather has pushed activities indoors and that the public is increasingly letting down its guard with regard to social distancing, mask-wearing and limiting social interactions. Contact tracing shows much of the spread is occurring during social and family gatherings. Officials also have sounded the alarm in recent weeks about holiday travel potentially increasing the virus’s spread. More than 350,000 people opted into Maryland’s smartphone contact-tracing app on Tuesday, the first day it was operational, state officials said. The app, available on Apple and Android phones, assigns users random numbers that can be used to trace whether they have encountered someone who later tests positive for the virus. Some of Maryland’s highest rates of infection are in rural areas that were largely spared in the spring when the virus swept through the state’s populated Washington suburbs and the Baltimore area. The seven-day average of new cases in Western Maryland’s Allegany County is more than five times that of 14 days ago. On Wednesday, Frostburg State University in Allegany County suspended in-person courses for the rest of the semester following a campus outbreak. Forty-five students and employees who have contracted the virus are in isolation. The University of Maryland on Wednesday canceled Saturday’s football game against Ohio State University after eight Maryland players tested positive for the virus this week. Wednesday’s seven-day average of 3,015 new infections in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. was well above the peak seen during the first wave of the pandemic. Before this recent surge in cases, a record high of 2,218 average daily infections had stood since May 31. Despite the sharp rise in caseloads, the number of coronavirus-related fatalities in the region has generally held steady, with the seven-day average standing at 21 on Wednesday. The region added 31 new deaths Wednesday, with 16 in Maryland, 15 in Virginia and none in D.C.

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Spanberger sparked a debate about ‘defund the police’ attacks. Cameron Webb slogged through them.

Democratic Party rather than something we should weaponize among ourselves.” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents deep-blue Arlington and Alexandria, said he was skeptical about how much Republican attack ads truly hurt Democrats in swing districts, believing Trump’s mobilization of supporters was the most potent and obvious factor affecting those contests. Beyer also said Webb’s race — he would have been the first Black doctor ever elected to Congress — may have been a factor, especially given the racially polarized presidential campaign. “Without Trump on the ticket, [Webb] might have been able to do better,” Beyer said. “Trump was bringing out the White working class, who in much of the South are still not going to be excited about a Black candidate. They may not consider themselves racist at all — I’m not trying to say that — but it is a subtle part of their world perspective.” Luria also noted that the lines of the 5th District had been redrawn since 2008, the last time a Democrat won, so that they favored Republicans even more. But when it came down to it, Webb said, he had to commend Good for sticking so closely to his pro-Trump messaging. Webb, who observed strict social distancing precautions because of the pandemic, also said he wished he would have found more ways to get in front of voters safely. He felt especially constrained because he was potentially exposed to the virus when treating covid-19 patients in the University of Virginia hospital. The source for many of the “defund” attacks against Webb stemmed from a television interview Webb gave this summer, when the Democrat expressed support for racial justice protesters and said the “defund the police” language that was flooding the streets then should be used “appropriately.” Thereafter, he found himself repeatedly denying that his comments amounted to support for defunding the police. But Webb had no regrets about his words, saying he found it important in a conversation about racial justice to at the very least acknowledge the viewpoints of people across the district who both supported and opposed calls for “defunding” police. “That’s something that is sometimes incompatible with our hot-mic politics, but it’s so important for us to be able to do from a healing perspective,” he said. “The key here is being able to hold space for the range of views that exist and say, how do we move forward?”

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Trump administration official who questions global warming will run key climate program

David Legates, a meteorologist who claims that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for plants and that global warming is harmless, has been tapped to run the federal agency that oversees a major scientific report on how climate change is affecting the United States. Legates, a controversial figure who joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in September, will move to a new slot as head of the U.S. Global Change Research Program as early as Thursday, according to two people familiar with the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Legates could not be reached for comment. His views on climate run counter to the scientific consensus that human activities — primarily the burning of fossil fuels — have generated greenhouse gases that are causing global temperatures to rise, ice sheets to melt, sea levels to rise and triggering other irreversible damage to the planet. A NOAA spokesman declined to confirm Legates’s move. The shift would put Legates in position at least to influence the authors chosen to craft the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report that periodically examines climate change damage and includes projections for the United States, down to regional and local levels. The assessment is used by federal and state governments and industry to make decisions about infrastructure projects, to allocate resources and to plan for disasters. The version released in 2018 has been cited in court cases in which cities, states and individuals sued fossil fuel companies and the U.S. government, arguing that they have failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite knowing about the severity of the problem. That assessment was released under the Trump administration but had been largely completed by federal agencies and outside scientists under President Barack Obama. It angered the White House by warning that human-caused climate change already was fueling deadlier wildfires, increasingly intense hurricanes and brutal heat waves. The report’s authors warned that climate change poses a severe threat to Americans’ health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. “I don’t believe it,” President Trump later said of those findings. A former NOAA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Legates’s appointment made little sense. “Sometimes these moves are made at the end of an administration. It’s like tilting at a windmill: It’s a nice move to

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With its leader in jail, this city cowered to his will

Two months later, Iturbe publicly threatened to resign. He said the state had failed to protect him. Elsewhere in Mexico, mayors have grown so afraid that they have governed from outside their municipalities. Since receiving multiple death threats, Yanet Morales Huizar, the mayor of Apulco in Zacatecas state, has governed almost entirely over the telephone from an undisclosed location. “I decided I had to protect myself,” she said. Iturbe opted to stay in Amacuzac. If the threats continued, he said, he would quit. “I spoke to my family about it,” he said. “They told me to keep going.” By June of this year, Iturbe was a different man: confident, outspoken, funny. He sat behind his desk wearing a surgical mask. The city had been battling a growing number of coronavirus cases. “The state government never sent me the security I asked for,” he said. “But we are trying our best.” A few months earlier, investigators with the state attorney general’s office had searched a cattle farm once managed by the Miranda family, looking for a mass grave. The team brought shovels and dug into the brown dirt. “What I can confirm is that it was a search for bodies, but I still cannot tell you if there was a discovery or not,” said Uriel Carmona Gándara, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. The Miranda family had exploded in anger. “They are tearing up everything,” said Brito, Miranda’s daughter-in-law. “They won’t even tell us what they are doing here.” Mazari Hernández was arrested in late 2019 and his detention dramatically changed the security dynamic in Morelos, weakening Los Rojos just as the Jalisco New Generation cartel was expanding across the country. If the Miranda family had once been untouchable in Amacuzac, officials said, that was no longer the case. In April, Miranda’s brother was found killed near the livestock market. Iturbe said he was starting to feel more comfortable. He was hopeful that security conditions were beginning to stabilize. But it turned out the decline of Los Rojos and the fall of the Miranda family did not mean that Amacuzac was safer, or out of cartel control. An internal security map of Morelos shared by state authorities showed a new fight for power between groups representing the Familia Michoacana and the Jalisco cartel. “Security hasn’t improved,” said one official. “It has just changed.” By October, violence had again seized Amacuzac.

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Surveillance, reeducation and the Office of Honesty: How China tames its people

Traditionally there have been two ways to define China watchers — either as “panda huggers” or “dragon slayers.” Panda huggers tended to be foreigners who lived in China for years, learned the language, watched the progress of economic and political reform in the 1980s, and spent time with the Chinese people in the hinterlands during a period of magical thinking about China. (Full disclosure: I lived in northeast China and Hong Kong in those years.) “Panda hugger,” I realize now, was (and is) probably a derisive term. The dragon slayers were, quite simply, the unseduced. They saw China’s communist rulers as expansionist, working toward a day when they would no longer struggle to feed their own people and instead be able to position China on the world stage as an aggressive superpower. The dragon slayers weren’t surprised when tanks rumbled into Tiananmen Square in June 1989, crushing student demonstrators. Panda huggers, like me, were stunned. That’s why “We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State,” by Kai Strittmatter, should come with a warning label for panda huggers. His engrossing, deeply reported and somewhat Orwellian survey of today’s China raises unhappy questions we all have yet to answer. “The China we once knew no longer exists,” he writes early in the book. “The China that was with us for forty years — the China of ‘reform and opening up’ — is making way for something new. It’s time to start paying attention.” Strittmatter is a German journalist who writes for the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. From 1997 until recently, he was a foreign correspondent in Beijing. Before that, he studied Sinology and journalism in Munich; Xian, China; and Taipei, Taiwan. So he comes to this issue with the clear-eyed vision that accompanies firsthand experience. Early in the book, Strittmatter takes aim at the two assumptions that panda huggers hold dear: If China wants to modernize, it will eventually have to embrace capitalism; by extension, if it has capitalism, democracy will soon follow. And, if China wants the Internet (and it does), it will have to accommodate the openness that comes with it. Strittmatter makes a compelling case that we are wrong to accept either of these beliefs. To make his argument he takes readers on a China tour that is part George Orwell, part Aldous Huxley. In the city of Rongcheng, for example, Strittmatter pays a visit to the Office of

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Con su líder encarcelado, esta ciudad se acobardó a su voluntad

201 funcionarios locales fueron asesinados. Muchos de ellos, dicen los analistas, porque estaban vinculados a cárteles o porque se negaron a cooperar con ellos. “Incluso si eres un alcalde que quiere mantenerse honesto, se convierte en un asunto de supervivencia física para ti y tu familia”, dijo Falko Ernst, investigador del International Crisis Group en México. “En muchos casos se quedan con muy pocas opciones”. El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador ha exigido que la Policía local se someta a “pruebas de confianza”, incluyendo una prueba del polígrafo, para demostrar que son leales al gobierno y no a los grupos de crimen organizado. En algunos lugares, como en Acapulco en 2018, fuerzas policiales enteras han sido disueltas por la sospecha de tener vínculos con cárteles. Los alcaldes están legalmente exentos de esas pruebas de confianza. Aún así, varias fuerzas de seguridad estatales han emprendido sus propias campañas de contrainteligencia contra los funcionarios locales. Morelos ha sido inusualmente transparente. Las autoridades estatales dijeron este año haber encontrado un teléfono celular propiedad de un asociado de Hernández que tenía 11,000 intercambios de nota de voz relacionadas con las operaciones de Los Rojos, muchos de ellos entre Hernández y autoridades locales en todo el estado. “Nos muestra cómo funciona todo”, dijo un funcionario de seguridad del estado, quien habló bajo condición de anonimato para poder discutir una investigación en curso. Existían más pruebas. En 2017, las autoridades encontraron un video que mostraba al alcalde de Mazatepec, un municipio a unos pocos kilómetros al norte de Amacuzac, amenazado por hombres armados enmascarados del cártel. “Queremos que coopere”, dijo uno de los hombres armados. “No me voy a hacer el héroe”, afirmó el alcalde Jorge Toledo, sometido. “Ustedes hagan su trabajo y yo haré el mío”. El problema de la corrupción en la política local a veces parece inabordable. Las autoridades estatales pueden arrestar a alcaldes y jefes de la Policía, pero eso no logra eliminar la influencia de los grupos criminales a menos de que puedan conseguir líderes transparentes e inflexibles para reemplazarlos. Con Miranda en la cárcel, Ojeda buscó un reemplazo. “Alguien que esté limpio”, le dijo al Post el año pasado. “Alguien en que podamos confiar”. Pero cualquier persona que hubiera dado un paso al frente habría sido visto como un desafío a la familia Miranda. El último alcalde de Amacuzac que no fue un Miranda fue un hombre llamado Noé Reynoso,

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Ivy League cancels winter sports as coronavirus pandemic worsens

The Ivy League canceled its winter sports seasons, the conference announced Thursday, making it the first Division I college athletics conference to do so. The league — composed of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale — made its decision amid an unprecedented spike in the coronavirus pandemic nationally. New coronavirus cases in the United States reached a record total of 145,835 on Wednesday, a number that was on track to be topped Thursday. “Consistent with its commitment to safeguard the health and well-being of student-athletes, the greater campus community and general public, the Ivy League Council of Presidents has decided that league schools will not conduct intercollegiate athletics competition in winter sports during the 2020-21 season. In addition, the Ivy League will not conduct competition for fall sports during the upcoming spring semester. Lastly, intercollegiate athletics competition for spring sports is postponed through at least the end of February 2021,” the conference announced. The canceled winter sports include men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s ice hockey, men’s and women’s squash, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s and women’s indoor track and field, and wrestling. Ivy League athletes in fall and winter sports will not lose a season of college eligibility, the conference announced. “Throughout the last nine months,” the Ivy League Council of Presidents said in a joint statement, "we have asked our campus communities to make extraordinary adjustments in order to do our part in combating the global pandemic and to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our students, faculty members, staff and the communities in which they live and work. “Regrettably, the current trends regarding transmission of the COVID-19 virus and subsequent protocols that must be put in place are impeding our strong desire to return to intercollegiate athletics competition in a safe manner. Student-athletes, their families and coaches are again being asked to make enormous sacrifices for the good of public health — and we do not make this decision lightly. … We look forward to the day when intercollegiate athletics — which are such an important part of the fabric of our campus communities — will safely return in a manner and format we all know and appreciate.” In March, the Ivy League was the first Division I conference to cancel its men’s and women’s postseason basketball tournaments. In July, it became the first major conference to announce it would not

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The election is over, but there’s no end to Republican bad faith

to believe that America’s democratic system is fundamentally corrupt. No agent of China or Russia could do a better job of sabotage. Republicans are fostering cynicism about the constitutional order on a massive scale. They are stumbling toward sedition. And they are looking mighty pathetic in the process. After Trump’s campaign manager threatened political harm to Republicans who refused to embrace Trump’s position on the election, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) reported promptly for degradation. Cruz falsely alleged that Republican poll watchers had been denied access in Philadelphia. McCarthy falsely asserted: “President Trump won this election.” It was a good thing both men were not in the same room or their strings might have gotten tangled. Other Republicans simply expressed no opinion on the validity of a U.S presidential election, as though Trump’s sabotage of democratic legitimacy was just another tweet they could ignore. What explains this degree of deference to a besieged, erratic lame-duck president? Some legislators claim that they are just providing time for Trump to cool down and accustom himself to the election result. They believe, apparently, that the president just needs a little encouragement and self-care before he will do the right thing. This theory is less compelling on the 1,001st unsuccessful attempt. Trump will not sacrifice any personal interest merely for the good of the country. He will interpret anything short of opposition as permission. And permission is clearly what many elected Republicans intend to provide. The only plausible explanation for Republican complicity is fear. Fear of a vengeful, wounded president. Fear of a Trump-endorsed primary challenger. Fear of voters so loyal that they stuck with Trump through a botched pandemic response, a wrecked economy and an aimless campaign. The damage encouraged by feckless elected Republicans is considerable. Trump’s defiance of the election results is already creating confusion in the transition process. The incoming Biden administration is being denied resources and facilities: office space, government email addresses that allow secure communication, access to classified briefings. That will undermine the staffing and preparations necessary to tackle concurrent health and economic challenges. It is particularly obscene for an administration that has abdicated the work of pandemic response to undercut a new administration determined to mount a serious effort. Trump seems determined to extend his legacy of incompetence and needless death as far into the future as possible. The other effect of

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Transcript: Post Live Election Daily with Trump Campaign Advisory Board Member Ken Blackwell & Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

your politics. COVID-19 is a very real threat to every single one of us, all across this country. Governor Herbert has got a challenge in front of him, just like every one of us governors does. The reason I've been asking my legislature to codify this is because I have a Republican legislature, and it really needs to be all hands-on deck in order to push our COVID numbers down, and codification would say, "We, Republican legislature, agree. We've got to get the politics out and we've all got to mask up." That's the value in that. Currently, the law in Michigan is you're supposed to be wearing a mask. That is the law, codification won't change that, but it will reinvigorate, I think, the bipartisan effort that needs to happen in this country around masking up, because this is a dangerous moment. We as a nation are posting record numbers. Every day the numbers are getting worse. That means more hospitalizations; that means, sadly, more deaths. And it is going to keep getting worse as the temperature plummets and we converge with flu season. And so, masking up right now is and remains, despite the great news on the vaccine front--currently, the best tool we still have is a mask, and we've got to get the politics out of putting that mask on, because it's a way to be patriotic; it's a way to protect ourselves; it's a way to protect our economy. MR. COSTA: Your state is going to get very chilly in the coming weeks as winter nears. How are you going to respond to Michiganders who say, "Governor, I'm sick of this. Governor, you're acting like Big Brother with these mandates. I'm not going to follow this." And they're not, maybe, convinced by the argument you just made, that the facts are--there are outbreaks throughout the state, there are outbreaks throughout the nation. How are you going to handle that type of person in Michigan who's just sick of the pandemic and thinks you're overstepping your executive power? GOV. WHITMER: Well, I think a new administration will go a long way toward that. If we can have people who have positions of authority all continuing to share accurate, consistent medical information about the seriousness of this virus. If we can build coalitions, Republican and Democratic alike. I've got an ongoing conversation with my colleagues here in

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Transcript: Post Live Election Daily with Trump Campaign Advisory Board Member Ken Blackwell & Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

vaccine front--currently, the best tool we still have is a mask, and we've got to get the politics out of putting that mask on, because it's a way to be patriotic; it's a way to protect ourselves; it's a way to protect our economy. MR. COSTA: Your state is going to get very chilly in the coming weeks as winter nears. How are you going to respond to Michiganders who say, "Governor, I'm sick of this. Governor, you're acting like Big Brother with these mandates. I'm not going to follow this." And they're not, maybe, convinced by the argument you just made, that the facts are--there are outbreaks throughout the state, there are outbreaks throughout the nation. How are you going to handle that type of person in Michigan who's just sick of the pandemic and thinks you're overstepping your executive power? GOV. WHITMER: Well, I think a new administration will go a long way toward that. If we can have people who have positions of authority all continuing to share accurate, consistent medical information about the seriousness of this virus. If we can build coalitions, Republican and Democratic alike. I've got an ongoing conversation with my colleagues here in the region, governors on both sides of the aisle who are confronting the very same thing and are trying to achieve the same goals, and that is increasing compliance with masks. We all know this is the best thing that we can do. But we're all tired of it. Trust me, I'm as tired of COVID-19 as the average person in Michigan or the average person in any part of this country is. And yet, COVID-19 doesn't care. And that's why it's so important that we continue to try to find ways to break through and to explain to people what's really at stake here and why it's so important every one of us does our part. Our rural hospitals are filling up. What was largely considered an urban issue, right, places where big cities are--where people are seeing--where COVID was spreading so fast early on, it's now a much more rural issue. And our rural hospitals are nowhere near as big or as equipped to deal with the COVID influx, and that means more people are going to get hurt in our rural areas. So, we really have to do everything we can to build the coalition, to reach

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Help the National Zoo name its baby panda

The National Zoo in Washington is seeking the public’s help in naming its baby giant panda. In a Twitter message, the zoo invited the public to select a name between Monday and Friday this week. The name with the most votes will be given to the cub on Nov. 23. The panda was born Aug. 21 and weighed 9.2 pounds as of early this month. Zoo officials said the cub’s favorite activities are “napping, nursing and cuddling with mother Mei Xiang.” Suggestions for names on the zoo’s website included the following: Mandarin Chinese for “prosperous boy.” Mandarin Chinese for “little miracle.” Mandarin Chinese for “happy and prosperous.” Mandarin Chinese nickname for a boy.

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Transcript: The Future Reset: Powering Equitable Opportunity

of countries on the planet. We will come up with the technology. But we have to most importantly raise our ambition globally as we go in to the Glasgow Meeting, which is the follow-on meeting now to Paris which will take place next year. And that's absolutely imperative. If we don't do that, again, we're not going to get there. So, this will be one of the most gigantic global organizational challenges, but we're up to it. And I think Mary has cited one of the single most important steps we could take is to have not command and control, telling companies how they have to do, what they have to do, but setting standards which then people can follow and they can go out and innovate and figure out the best and cheapest and most effective way of dealing with it. But pricing carbon and having a method, which has worked in other countries in now four markets. There's one in the East Coast of America, Reg E; there's one in the West Coast which involves Canada and Western states, California. There's--China is going to be coming online with one. And then you have the European trading mechanism. That is going to contribute very significantly, I think, to accelerating the pace of meeting this challenge. MR. IGNATIUS: So, let me--let me turn to President Robinson. Secretary Kerry helped negotiate the Paris climate accords. President-elect Biden has said he's going to rejoin them. But Secretary Kerry rightly reminds us, we're really now thinking about the road to Glasgow, the road to the follow-on agreement. And I'd ask you, President Robinson, for some more specific ideas that should be on the agenda as we think not simply about getting back to the world of the Paris Accords, but the follow-on accords that are essential to do what you and Secretary Kerry have talked about. Give us some specifics. MS. ROBINSON: Well, the first specific, and a really important one, is the Glasgow conference, because that's where countries have to set out their nationally determined contributions--this is U.N. complicated language--but their commitment for 2030. Now importantly, as Nick mentioned in the last session, China has committed to be carbon-neutral by at least 2060, meaning maybe before 2060. Japan has just committed to be carbon-neutral by 2050. I know that the Biden plan is to be carbon-neutral by 2050. That's a bit too

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Businesses race to battle back new coronavirus restrictions as U.S. faces deadly new surge

though party leaders in the House adopted a bill months ago. The stalemate over federal coronavirus aid has fueled some of the resistance nationwide toward another round of coronavirus-related shutdowns. In Oregon, for example, a broad coalition representing local gyms, restaurants, hotels, wineries and other businesses pointed to the loss of enhanced federal unemployment and small business assistance as it urged Democratic Gov. Kate Brown against adopting “any future business closures or curtailed operations.” Brown on Friday imposed a two-week halt on everything from office buildings to zoos in an attempt to bring the state’s outbreak back under control. “We’re very concerned about closing businesses now,” said Sandra McDonough, president of Oregon Business and Industry, an advocacy group that is part of the coalition. “And we’re not sure that’s really going to address the spread, that’s the issue.” The group instead called on the state to redouble its efforts on testing and focus on the spread of covid-19 through private social gatherings, particularly ahead of Thanksgiving. The arrival of the lucrative holiday season has added even more urgency to some of the lobbying efforts. More than half of Americans say they aren’t planning any holiday travel this year, according to a poll conducted by the U.S. Travel Association. More than a quarter of Americans say they expect to spend less on gifts over the coming weeks, according to a survey conducted by Gallup. The downturn threatens to deliver another blow to some retailers that have already experienced significant revenue shortfalls this year. The potential for additional sky-high losses appears to have emboldened the industry to look more skeptically — and fight more aggressively — against new or heightened restrictions viewed as onerous for some retailers. The National Retail Federation, for example, has taken aim at states including New Mexico, which under an order issued in October required shops to close if they experience four or more workplace cases of covid-19 over a two-week period. NRF invoked state open-records law Tuesday to try to force New Mexico’s leaders to turn over more information about how they devised the policy in the first place. Stephanie Martz, the retail lobby’s general counsel, said the group is likely to oppose the kind of broad shutdowns many states instituted in the spring. “We know more about how this spread than we did in March,” she said on Friday. “The answer cannot be that we make